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My Favorite Alaskan Train Picture

A virtual tour with Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

Having grown up in the era of trains, my husband and I are both enthusiasts, although we don't get a chance to ride very often. Therefore, a highlight of the trip was a ride on the marvelous Alaska Railroad from Talkeetna to Denali.

I hadn't taken any pictures in more than two years and wished I had spent a little more time practicing before trying to take nine rolls of film on a trip I dreamed of taking for many years. I might have been doing something wrong and maybe all of them would be duds.

This one, however, was not. It was taken from the platform between two cars when I stuck my head and upper body out the side. From there I got some good shots of Hurricane Gulch and THE mountain, which can be seen for miles around and which you'll see on the next page.

But this is my favorite, with a mirror effect created by the shiny side of the train. And don't worry, I wasn't about to get my head knocked off by a passing train 'cause we had begun to slow down. It turns out that the train runs from Seward, south of Anchorage, to about thirty miles beyond Fairbanks, a distance of almost 500 miles. So somewhere in the middle of nowhere the crew of our train switched places with the crew of the southbound train, allowing cooks, waitresses, conductors, etc. to return to their home base.

After we landed at the train station in Denali National Park and Preserve, we got into yet another bus and were driven to Mt. McKinley Village, where we joined other members of the tour for a wine and cheese reception that evening. After a talk by a naturalist on the subarctic, Bob discovered we could still catch a flight that evening to THE mountain. Remember, the days are long in June, only a short distance from the top of the world, and consequently there's lots more daylight in which to fly than there is down south.

So we were off again to an airport, this time we flew in a small plane with Denali Air.

Continue the tour with Mighty Denali

© Copyright 2000, Revised 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT