Back in 2006, we took a vacation to Alaska. We went the whole nine yards, starting off in Fairbanks, overnighting in Denali National Park, and then cruising on a small ship our of Juneau for a week. While this was in the age of digital cameras, I had very good Nikon film camera equipment (Nikon FM2 with a motor drive, 35mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.4 Nikkor lenses) and so I took pictures on film. 13, 36-exposure rolls of them.

These pictures sat in a box in our house in Lake Riverside from that summer until last December. I had been given a high quality film scanner for Christmas and was intent on finally getting to edit and share the pictures I took over 14 years ago.

When I had the film processed, I had Samy’s scan the negatives in fairly low resolution. I loaded these lower resolution pictures into Lightroom and began to select candidates for scanning. Having selected 115 of the roughly 450 pictures, I set about scanning and editing the photos. This post is the first batch.

As I mentioned above, we started the trip in Fairbanks. After a nice visit with my brother-in-law, we started the official part of the tour. There was a river boat ride, a visit with some real sled dogs and their trainer/owner, and panning for gold. I haven’t gotten to those photos yet, and there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about them since I am omitting photos of the family per my usual policy.

From Fairbanks, we took the Alaska Train south to Denali National Park. It is a pretty four-hour ride with ongoing commentary from a tour guide. Here is a view out of the train window as we round a curve. Click on any picture to see a full-sized version.

Upon arrival at Cantwell at the entrance to the park, we boarded a bus for an six hour or so drive across the park to Kantishna Roadhouse on the far west side of the park. Kantishna Roadhouse is a rustic lodge catering to tourists like us. But the real thrill was the drive across the park. It was overcast and drizzling when we set out, but the views were great.

Traveling at the end of June, everything was very green and the days really never ended.

The real highlight was the wildlife. Here is a somewhat skinny moose eating by a pond. Most of my picture-taking time when there was wildlife I was using our video camera, so I don’t have too many still photos of wildlife. But I do have some.

As the skies began to clear the shadows on the valley were beautiful.

We got a nice view of some Dall sheep resting on a rocky outcropping.

And then the skies cleared and we came around a bend in the road and there was Denali! It was magnificent.

There was a big moose eating in the foreground. Look carefully in the center of the frame.

At 20,146 feet in elevation (6,140 meters), Denali is a very impressive mountain.

Clearly, we need another view of this great mountain.

We passed another moose who looked up from his eating to peer at us. Moose get all their green food in only a couple of months a year, so when it is green they eat almost non-stop.

After a nice stay at Katishna Roadhouse, we headed back to catch the train south. On our drive back to Cantwell, it did not clear up but remained misty and rainy.

We came across a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs. Bears need to eat a lot in the summer just like the moose. They really go after anything, but in particular, berries. In looking at this tourist-based economy in this part of Alaska, we realized that the locals needed to get a lot of business in the summer, because things are cold and dark in the winter. This made us realize that we — tourists — were the “berries” for the local economy.

These two cubs look cute, but don’t get close!

We passed by a braided river before getting back to Cantwell.

Finally, it was back on the train to head south to Anchorage. We stayed overnight and flew out the next morning to meet our ship, the Spirit of Alaska, in Juneau. But that will be another post.

And repeating a Denali photo so Facebook picks it up as the thumbnail.