On the road with a tour – Alaska Railroad to Denali
After a very full day on Sunday, Monday was a very leisurely one for most of us. At 0820 we departed from Fairbanks for a 4-hour trip to Denali National Park, in one of the luxurious McKinley Explorer cars on the Alaska Railroad. This was one of the things that my groups have done for many years that I could never join them on, as the driver goes ahead to Denali so that everything is ready when the train arrives.
Our car manager, Ben, did an excellent tour en route – not too much talking, just good information when it was appropriate. Most of the route is very pleasant but not exciting, and a few people slept through part of it. Once we began our crossing of the Alaska Range, though, all eyes were open, and the Nenana Gorge section is simply stunning. The first photo shows the view as we passed the hotel area, a couple of miles from the Denali station.
There’s a small gift shop on the train (of course! 🙂 ), and I bought a Bachmann AKRR train set that I’ve been eyeing for a few years. I’m not quite sure yet what I’m going to do with it, but having it run around my office just above eye level is appealing.
The Denali park gate area gets uglier every year (people in the tourism industry call it “Glitter Gulch”), and I have a hard time even trying to absorb all the new crap so I can answer whatever questions might arise. To add to that commercial ugliness, the park concessionaire, Aramark, gets more ignorant each year. This year (to make a long story very short), we got bumped from our booked-months-ago hotel at the last minute, and ended up at the Crow’s Nest Cabins. They’re very basic, but clean, away from the hustle and bustle, and they have great views, as you see in the next photo. Everybody seemed to be pleased with the property. Instead of spending 2 nights here as we do normally, though, we have to move to Talkeetna tonight, as no suitable hotel had 2 nights available on short notice.
It’s now 04:30, the sun is just hitting the summit of Mount Healy across the valley, and it’s looking like a spectacular day for the Tundra Wilderness Tour!
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