Anchorage – Denali – Fairbanks
A comfortable, modern train trip to Denali National Park, Alaska –carriages had seating on the top floor with a glass dome roof (see photo) and a dining room below. There are timed sessions for moving from your allocated seat to the dining room. Here very nice meals are served at tables – good food/wine/service etc. Most passengers share their table with another couple. We did – a couple from Texas, USA. When in the seating area, there is excellent commentary from a tour guide – informative and entertaining.
We arrived at the “The McKinley Chalet Resort” (near the train line) in the early evening. It was more like a 3 star hotel built to cater for large numbers of tourists – we enjoyed the forest setting but the hotel just adequately served our purpose with a comfortable enough room & bed plus a shower that took a v long time to warm up! The next morning we went on the day long Tundra Tour – conditions were cramped on the old school bus and perhaps there are now more comfortable ways of touring Denali? The highlight of this train/bus trip was seeing the grizzly bears and the stunning colours of the tundra.