5 Day Alaskan Winter Adventure

This day was dedicated to Denali National Park.  

There are several ways to do this trip. Only a 2-hour drive from Fairbanks, you could easily drive there and back with plenty of time to explore the park, check out the views and hike. There are also bush plane tours from Fairbanks for a unique perspective. We chose to do the “Denali in a Day” package through the Alaskan railroad.

The tour starts off with a narrated drive by the Northern Alaska Tour Company from Fairbanks to Denali. We made a few stops along the way; my favorite was in Nenana. The fun part about this small town is the annual “Ice classic”. People from around the world can place a $2.50 bet to guess the exact time and date that the ice in the river will break up. The person(s) who are closest, or spot on, wins the pot of money! They have a live feed of the Tanana River on their website, and locals are ALWAYS checking on it. We are still waiting to know who will win in 2022 (cross your fingers for us!).  

After a quick pit stop at the entrance sign to snap a few pictures, we made our way to the visitors’ center where we ate lunch and watched an interesting video on how the park uses sled dogs for maintenance, patrol and transport during the winter months. Later, we actually got to meet the dogs at their kennel. Anyone can stop by, it’s a popular tourist attraction! As we drove through the park, we took pictures of the scenic views and eventually parked so we could go for a quick snowshoe hike. Finally, they took us to the train station right inside the national park. While we waited for the train to arrive our tour guide provided us with hot chocolate and candies. Once we heard the horn blare we got out of the van, took a few pictures in front of the train and made our way to our seats for the 4-hour ride back. I was awestruck by the views we had on the train and the information they shared while we traveled back to Fairbanks.  

Although we enjoyed the informative tour, we were slightly disappointed. We are avid hikers and were hoping for more time outside hiking or snowshoeing. That was our main reason for visiting the national park. The tour guide was big on staying together, so we didn’t have the opportunity to do our own thing.  We could have done without the extended lunch and video, and skipped the meet and greet with the dogs (since we had already done that). Our tour guide apologized and said every group she does this with is different, sometimes she doesn’t snowshoe at all, sometimes she does the full loop. Unfortunately, some people in our group were unprepared and lacked the ability to hike very far. Overall, we enjoyed the park. We were blown away by the views and it truly was informative. It was a nice perk that neither of us had to drive so we could really just take it all in and relax. I enjoyed the train ride more than I expected too (it didn’t hurt that they had a bar, snacks and even a sit-down dinner option). If you are okay with the possibility of not getting a ton of time outside, this might be an excursion you consider!