The Alaska Railroad offers passenger service year-round. It runs from the port city of Seward on Resurrection Bay, northward for 467 miles to Fairbanks. The service is great and the views along the way are magnificent. There are mountain ranges, forests, glaciers, rivers, oceans and wildlife (we saw 3 eagles and 10-12 moose) around every bend. It's a fun, comfortable and stress-free way to see a bit of this huge state. Below are a couple of photos Beth captured from the train:
We had taken the train from Seward to Anchorage on a previous visit to Alaska. This time we're taking it from Anchorage north to the end of the line in Fairbanks. We've divided our Alaska Railroad adventure into two sections. Tuesday morning we caught the Auroura Winter Train from Anchorage to Talkeetna, a 123 mile jaunt that took just under three hours. We stayed two nights in Talkeetna and later this morning we'll hop back on the train to continue our journey. This time we'll be heading 227 miles further northward to Fairbanks. We're keeping an eye on the weather forecast for Fairbanks. It has changed slightly. The lows have dropped a couple of degrees and it's now forecasting a low of -19 and the highs have also dropped a couple of degrees further down into the single digits. We were seeking the Alaska winter experience and I think we found it!
After arriving in Talkeetna, we enjoyed the hotel for a few hours before taking the complimentary shuttle into "town". We were in Talkeetna last May and needless to say, Talkeetna looks a little different in early March. We enjoyed slowly strolling down Main Street from Auroura Dora's Photography, past Nagley's General Store, the Roadhouse, Mountain High Pizza to Riverfront Park along the banks of the now frozen Talkeetna River. Even though it was less than a half a mile, it took us quite a while because the street was one long sheet of slippery ice. Thankfully we made it down and back with just a few slips (mine) but no falls. We celebrated our successful walk with a pizza from Mountain High Pizza before taking the shuttle back to the hotel.
Yesterday was another "snow day". It was snowing when we got up and still snowing when we went to bed, and it's still snowing now. It looks like the total snowfall for the day ended up in the 8-10 inch range. No big deal to Talkeetna residents, another few inches on top what's already on the ground is barely noticeable. It was a fun day simply relaxing at the hotel, reading, taking my usual beating at scrabble and watching the snow come down.
