Skip to main content

Train from Denali to Anchorage -- Monday, Sept. 11, 2023

Our last day and we are up and out of the room by 7:00.  Again, the tour company gets major credit for handling luggage.  There are no elevators in any of these places, we were always on the 2nd floor, but all you had to do was put your luggage outside the door by the appointed hour and it magically re-appeared in your room when you arrived in the afternoon.

The train was fun.  Our group was all in a single car which was roomier and more comfortable than the bus.  It’s just like you see in the travel brochures, with a glass top so you have amazing views as you travel to Anchorage.

The other advantages were that there was a “cruise director” – Sterling was his name – who had a great sense of humor and was excellent in pointing out things of interest during the journey (including 2 bear and 4 moose over the course of the trip).  Meals – lunch and dinner – were done on the lower level and we were seated at a table with a delightful couple who were originally from New York (and now from Florida).  We’d noticed that our tour group was not especially social, but this couple – whom we’d sat behind on the bus – bonded with us and we had a good time.

The other thing noted about the train – the food was exceptional!  It was very much on par with what we’d had on the cruise ship, prepared exactly as requested and was hot and appetizingly presented.  Probably the only complaint here – and it couldn’t be helped – is that lunch and dinner were a bit close together.

We arrived at the train station and boarded the Motorcoach again, this last time to travel to the Marriott for the nicest hotel room we’d had on this part of the trip.  Clean, well-lit, solid Wifi – it felt like we were no longer “camping” and were back in civilization.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friday, Sept 8, 2023 - Seward

So our cruise venture ended today, and 3 of our band head back to reality.  They have a train ride from the seaport to Anchorage, where they will catch their plane for a very long ride home. Celebrity has the exit process down.  Your luggage is snatched the night before and you have to be out of the room by 7(ish), you can get breakfast at the buffet and then wait in the lobby until your number is called.  For those of us going on to the land part of the trip, our luggage will magically appear wherever it is that we are going next. It's hard to get much smoother than that. We leave the ship today and begin the land portion of our trip.  Because the writing of these days is delayed, there may be some details that we miss.   We signed up for the land portion of the trip.  Most of this is done by “motorcoach”.  This is travel agent talk for “Greyhound Bus”, but the bus stops are cleaner and panhandlers aren’t usually coming up to bum a cigarette or c...

Busy, Busy Busy

Since exiting the ship on Friday we have been super busy going from place to place on the land portion of this trip -- on a bus.  Today we are moving from Denali National Park area back to Anchorage -- on an 8 hour train ride. More posts to follow....sometime....we're drafting them today and tomorrow.  Will post when we have internet access again.   Thanks for following along.

Headed Home -- Tuesday, Sept 12, 2023

The last morning, people started to go their different ways.  Once again, luggage was handled without needing us to participate other than to confirm our bags were loaded onto the bus (because we’re suspicious like that!). Travel to the airport on the noon shuttle to catch our 2ish flight, which was the start of a very long journey – Anchorage to Seattle to Detroit to Charlotte.  A total of 16 hours from start to home. We hadn’t flown anything other than American in years, with Charlotte being a hub for them.  This trip, though, we learned that you can’t hardly get there from here so we were on Delta and were pleasantly surprised.  It felt like the staff was friendlier, the food was definitely better and overall things seemed to go more smoothly than on American. Anchorage and Detroit (surprisingly!) had extremely nice airports – well lit, clean, and even at odd hours there were services available.  Landing in Charlotte, and for the first time in years coming in...