Monday August 5th.
Today we reluctantly left Denali National park for the ride to Fairbanks. We rode the McKinley Explorer train again this time north to Fairbanks. This is the northern most town of any size in Alaska. It is 100 miles from the Arctic circle, but because it is further inland than the places where we have been, it is much warmer here.
For about the first hour out of Denali we had beautiful scenery – here is our train curving ahead of us. The blue and yellow cars are the Alaska Railway cars, then the cruise companies all hook their luxury cars to the back.
About an hour out, it really turned to wilderness. The only accommodations to be found were the beaver palace – named by our train car manager because of it’s size.
The only things we saw for many miles were moose. First a large female moose quite close to the train, and then a mom and two babies much farther from the train. One is just visible in the grass.
We arrived in Fairbanks at about 8 PM and it was 75 degrees and very sunny. It doesn’t get dark here until 11:30 PM.
We got settled at the Westmark Fairbanks and took a walk downtown before bed. Lets just say this is not a hopping place at 9:30 on a Monday. We will walk back down tomorrow, but we did find a beautiful fountain with a sculpture of an Eskimo family in the center. We will explore Fairbanks a bit in the morning and then head out for Tok Alaska on our way into the Yukon.
