Flying by Denali

We are an equal opportunity family, at least when blog photos are concerned.

The last post saw the little one all happy to be airborne. This one has Jr. aka style missy on the plane.

We spent a wonderful two days at the Grande Denali Lodge which was an architectural marvel in itself. It is on a hill and the windy gravel road that leads up to it is apparently the third highest road in Alaska (or close to it)!

The views from the hotel were spectacular and the service was great. The kids loved the place. There were pick up services for the air taxi and to other places there from the hotel door which was great! 

If the views from the lobby and rooms were great, the views on the Fly Denali plane were mind blowing!

Here are the last few shots taken as we flew back from seeing Denali mountain up close towards Haley.

If you are going with small kids on this 8 seater plane.. remember this! There is NO restroom on an 8 seater plane. You get a bucket. The sight of the bucket is enough to deter any kid from thinking about going.. The bucket officially beats "think of daisies" as the pee pee restrainer!

That one looks hazy but the large size image shows up much better than this compressed jpg on this website.. 

On our way back the sun did his magic by giving us some special effects. We were going through clouds and that helped!

Have not gotten around to editing the images from the ground trip through the National park by bus.. 

On this trip we travelled by plane, boat, bus, car... bike, horse and dog-sled were other options, but the Homestead tour where we get to see the sled dogs being trained was vetoed against the better wishes of Jr. and the little one.. we know how it goes. . . first it is a request to see huskie puppies and before you know it the puppy lobby in the house has a major advantage and we are back to discussing why we will not have dogs in the house!

Next, bus tour pictures..

Denali by Air

We got a chance to fly on a Talkeetna Aeroservices (Fly Denali) plane all around Denali National Preserve to get a "birds eye view" of the Big one aka Mt. McKinley aka Denali! 

It was unbelievable. This mountain is 20000+ feet high and we got some majestic views when the clouds moved out. It was a great day to be on that little 8 seater plane.. The pilot, four of us and a Chinese family from Shanghai .. 

The little one had a bad cold and we decided not to go on the Glacier Landing tour. The fly by tour was amazing in itself. The pilot was patient and answered all of 200 or so questions the little one asked on the intercom type system..

think she was so excited by the intercom that she asked questions non-stop! They were all decent questions except for the one about the Ocean and the Pilot went "there is no ocean here!" .. think she mistook the blue yonder for "ocean" having done too many coastal trips..

A few photographs from the fly by trip..

That was the big one! The one in the photograph below is a peak that is framed in the back by the big one!

Everyone got sunglasses to protect their eyes from the light reflecting off all the snow. I did not wear it because of the logistics of taking pictures. Big mistake! After we landed, my eyes were sore for some time..

While we flew by this section which was a valley with an ice river running through it aka Glacier, thought of getting a HDR shot.. 

Was not expecting it to come out as the plane was moving fast.. but the idea worked. Went for a fast shutter speed, f/22 and high enough ISO to support the fast shutter speed. Got three images and merged them together (shown below).. You do get the detail in the shadow and the highlights on the HDR. In spite of the image having pretty much a black and white feel to it, the HDR worked! Cropped off 20% of my border, thanks to the movement but still happy with the end result!

On our way back..

Another HDR image of same location as we flew away from the Glacier..

The 17-40mm lens came in very handy for this trip. Was able to capture wide panoramas from an airplane window! 

More later..