Once again I’m traveling for work. This time it’s a trip to Elmendorf AFB near Anchorage, Alaska. We traveled on a Thursday so we could check out the trainer on Friday after the Air Force flying day and then let our hardware crew work on the trainer all weekend. I flew the trainer first thing Friday morning and helped the hardware guys get started on the modification but then I used my weekend for a train trip from Fairbanks, Alaska down to Anchorage. A mere 330 rail miles that will take 10 hours.

I got a “special” deal from the Alaskan Rail Road folks and flew from Anchorage to Fairbanks on Saturday to be ready to catch the train Sunday morning at 8:00 am. The package included staying at the River’s Edge Resort - a neat place with individual cabins. Neither Anchorage nor Fairbanks have had their “first snow” of the winter but the day time highs are in the upper 40’s or lower 50s with the night time lows running right around freezing.

This time of year is not high tourist season. The train consisted of a single locomotive followed by a dinning car, the coach car and then the baggage car. It looks like an 0 dark hundred departure but it’s really 8:00 AM. Remember, it’s early October just a couple hundred miles south of the Artic Circle so the days are getting short heading for the Winter Solstice. There are maybe 30 passengers as we make our on time departure.

The weather was gray overcast and threatening rain or snow. I spent much of the 10 hours in the dining car reading my Tom Clancy book and watching the scenery. And a lot of great scenery there was even with the clouds.

Following the Nenana River we went by the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve (pictured to the right), home of Mt. McKinley (known as Denali in native Aleyute). I kept track of our progress using my handy dandy Garmin GPS just to make sure the engineer didn’t take a wrong turn. The data base on the Garmin is amazing. It had the railroad, major rivers, and most of the villages we passed through.

At about the half way mark of the trip just before reaching the Susitna River we crossed a major engineering accomplishment on the railroad. A bridge over Hurricane Gulch so named for the high winds that blow though the gorge. The train slowed for a sure passage over the bridge – a 918 foot span some 296 feet above the river below -  and the opportunity for us to get a good picture.

South of the Susitna River we finally get a view of Mt. McKinley as the clouds break up in the afternoon. It’s just barely visible in this picture to the left of the small gray puffy cloud in the middle of the frame. On clear days the mountain is a dominating feature of the northern skyline in Anchorage 100 miles to the south. Not unlike Mt. Rainier in Seattle but bigger.