Wet rafting

Beth and I forded the mightly Nenana river today, going on a "mildwater" rafting adventure (the whitewater one didn't work as well with our schedule, plus the idea of getting splashed around by glacier melt river water for 2 hours wasn't 100% appealing - had the schedule worked better, I think we would have sucked it up and gotten soaked for the thrill of it all).

We've worn some crazy outfits this trip (ziplining harnesses, head to toe rain gear for biking, etc), but these dry suits may have been the worst we wore. They did their job though, keeping our clothes dry as the 38 degree water splashed us down the river. We shared a raft with 4 incredibly bratty little girls, which meant that our guide brought us through the roughest and wettest rapids possible (the guide tried to get them wet because they were kids not because they were bratty - I almost wouldn't have minded if one of them had fallen in, they were that poorly behaved and annoying).

If I can figure out how to get Beth's pictures uploaded onto this computer, I'll post pics of us in drysuits tomorrow.

Our rafting guide was terrific. Becky has been rafting the Nenana river for 14 summers now, and many of other guides in the company have also returned for many years. That seems unusual from the summer guides we've met throughout Alaska, who mostly seem to be college kids or just out of college. Apparently this rafting company values its guides and makes it worth their while to return year in and year out (they're locally owned and take pride in having great guides).

Just outside of Denali is also being taken over by cruise ship companies, as were many of the ports we stopped at during our cruise. The cruiselines do land tours up to Denali, so there are Princess and Holland America hotels, and the stores cater to the cruise crowd ($10.99 fleece! $1.99 tee shirts!). Like down south in Juneau, Kethikan, etc, there are signs for the locally owned businesses, so you can figure out which ones are not part of the cruise ship empire. We ate at a good local restaurant, 229 Park, which also tries to use as much local, organic food at possible. I'm not sure where they have enough warm weather and sunshine to grow vegetables around these parts, but the food was delicious!