July 5th, Homeward Bound

Our bus left the hotel at 3:45. That is early even in the daylight. The first leg of our journey was from Fairbanks to Seattle on Alaskan Airways. They checked our bags all the way to our final destination, which alleviated the need to pick our bags up in Dallas, which would have been a nightmare. It was a 3 hour flight. We had a great view of Mount St. Helen's in Seattle. It was interesting flying over all the areas we had cruised. You could recognize glaciers from the air. The flight from Seattle to Dallas was 4 hours. We both slept most of the way. Lois flew out to Killeen first and was home before my flight left for Kansas City. I had a 2 hour flight, hers was 30 minutes. The good news is that my bags were there when I arrived, so getting out of the airport was quick. Great trip.

July 4th, Fairbanks

We ate breakfast in the hotel, the had a nice buffet with reindeer sausage, my new favorite breafast meat. Included in the tour was a riverboat cruise. I guess I had pretty low expectation, but it really was nice. We left the hotel at 12:30 and arrived at the river just a few minutes later. Again, a gift shop. Shortly after we ate family style, beef stew and potatoe soup. After lunch we boarded the riverboat. We had a seaplane demonstration and a dogsledding demonstration before arriving at the native fishing village. At the fishing village we learned about native dress, housing, and fishing. It was all well orchestrated and very interesting. We returned to our hotel at about 5:30. Our one big excursion for the whole trip was a flight to the artic circle. When we arrived back to the hotel we went to the tour desk only to find out that it had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions at Fort Yukon. Bummer. To console ourselves we went out to dinner. We splurged on King Crab Legs. They were awesome. Food always makes things better. Our bags had to be in the hallway by 11:00 pm. Packing took a while since we had sent two bags to Fairbanks and had everything mixed up. We finally got everything sorted out. Sunset was at 12:34 am with sunrise at 3:40. There were people out playing basketball at 3:00 am...in the daylight. There was a full moon, but it like the fireworks didn't work as well in the day light as it would have at night, but it was clear and you could see Denali from our hotel room. It was beautiful.

July 3, Denali to Fairbanks

We had a couple of muffins in our room before we headed to the park visitor center. We sat through a presentation on Eagles and a short but good movie on the park. It was an odd day, our luggage had to be on the deck by 9:00 am and check-out was 10:00. Transportation for the train station was at 3:00 pm. Not too much time to do anything. We ate at a little pizza place and had the "it ain't the lower 48" pizza. It had reindeer sausage and elk burger. It was very good. It is only 120 miles between Denali and Fairbanks. And there are trees, trees and more trees. After the first hour or so, the land really flatted out and was pretty much the same the rest of the way. The guide explained that it was real tundra, with the permafrost keeping much from happening. We didn't hurry, that is for sure. We didn't arrive in Fairbanks until 8:00. Downtown fairbanks is less than happening. Sunset was at 12:30 a.m. It just never got dark.

July 2, Anchorage to Denali

Each cruise line seems to own its own cars on the railroad. On this particular train, Holland America and Princess lines had the most cars. There are several for Alaska Rail Roads, Our car has its own tour guide, bartender and cooks and waiters. We are grouped by tour. Our car has two different tours, but we are beginning to settle in with the same people. The scenery is beautiful. Mountains and trees, more mountains and more trees. We follow the river and the highway most of the way. The tour guide points out things of interest the who way and gives us facts about the terrain. There were several long bridges. The neatest part of the trip was when the clouds parted and Mount McKinley loomed before us. The guide explained the use of McKinley and Denali, Denali being the native name for the mountain. We went through a number of interesting little towns before we arrived at Denali National Park. We were met with the usual fleet of tour busses to take us to the hotel. We stayed at the chalets, our room was near the river at the bottom of the hill. The room was comfortable. The train trip was nearly eight hours. We arrived at about 4:00 in the afternoon. The problem was that very few excursions were available due to our short time in the part...only about 24 hours. There were the usual array of shops, so we shopped. We ended up eating at the Salmon Bake, which was very good. The salmon was done on a cedar plank and topped with a maple syrup accompanied with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. We stopped at the grocery store to renew our supply of tonic and diet coke. Bread was over $5.00 a loaf.

Steward to Anchorage, July 1

The sun was already up when our alam went off at 5:00 am. We had already docked in Steward. We just had to pack our hand luggage. We were in the first disembarkation group. They called us at 6:15 when we boarded our waiting train to Anchorage.

The train ride was beautiful, passing lakes, streams, mountains and lots of glaciers. There was a guide in each car pointing out different sites. We saw a mother bear with three cubs, a moose on the run, Dall Sheep and bunches of eagles. It was really beautiful, the wildflowers were all along the tracks.

We pulled into Anchorage about 11:45 and were transferred to the Anchorage Convention Center where we could check our hand baggage until three. We could see our hotel form the Center, but figured they were waiting to three and check-in time.

We wandered the weekend market, at lunch at the Rum Runner bar and grill and did a little shopping. We did go to the Anchorage Mall, which is right downtown. Pretty classy, but typical mall. We then headed back to pick up our luggage and walk to the hotel.

We were met in the lobby with all our instructions for tomorrow...another early day. Our send ahead big bag was waiting for us in our room. I like not having to worry about luggage.

 

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