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.