Day Eleven –Seward to Anchorage to Denali, NP – September 10, 2009

We pulled to Seward at 3:00am, and our scheduled time to disembark was at 7:00am. We met at our location on the ship, received our transfer tickets for the train, which we took to Anchorage Airport, and headed towards the exit. Once we stepped outside the doorway, it was a beautiful scene.

We walked through customs where bags, upon bags were waiting to load on the train. I hope ours is in there somewhere!

And walked to the train.


On the train we were pretty impressed with the seating area. I’ve never been on a train like this before that I can remember. All open, you can see everything. Our Steward, Mike, was quite the crack up with his story telling during the trip. He kept up with the corny jokes about the area, and himself. Once we were settled, we noticed the sun coming up over the Mountain. Clouds had many shades of grey, was pretty neat.

It took 4 hours to get to Anchorage. 4 gorgeous hours.


I would love to come back and just walk the entire length of this track all the way from Seward to Anchorage, camping alongside the tracks, so I can get some decent pictures of all these places.

See, all these were taken at warp speed on the train like everyone else. It was great to just sit there and look out the widows at the scenery.

Heading up into the mountains we passed glaciers, waterfalls and snowy mountaintops of the Chugach Range and travel through lush spruce and birch forests. Was quite beautiful with the bright yellow fall colors just coming in.

Back in 1964 most of this area was hit by a tidal wave from the 9.2 magnitude earthquake which struck Prince William Sound. It was amazing that the water came in this far. We were approximately 8 miles from Seward.

It was a major challenge to see how quick one can ‘draw’ the camera and take a shot at a fleeting scenic moment hoping it won’t be blurry. Like I said, I would love to come back and walk the entire length of this track from Seward to Anchorage, camp out on the side of the track, and capture some of these at sunrise or sunset!

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Most of the glaciers had the sun shining on them and too bright to capture, others just the perfect cloud coverage to see the blue in the glacier.




As we continued, Mike, the Steward, mentioned we could go between the cars and take shots out the windows in the doorways. Yep, that’s where I headed and stayed for quite some time.

The last 50 miles is along the Turnagain Arm. With tides that can vary over 40 feet, it has the second highest tides in North America. Beluga whales and Dall sheep are also often seen along this section, but unfortunately we saw none. I have so many shots I took during this ride, it’s going to take me quite some time to go through them all.

We arrived in Anchorage, grabbed our luggage and a rental car and headed to Denali National Park. This was another 4 hour drive. But so beautiful!

Then we got a glimpse of Denali. Huge! They say only 30% of all the visitors actually see Denali when visiting. Our first day and we see it. I sure hope we see it tomorrow!!

We head deep into Denali National Park tomorrow.