20 May 2006: Day 8 – Disembarkation At Whittier And En-Route to Denali National Park.

We had to be up by the ungodly hour of 5am today. Rushed a hurried bath and went up for our usual buffet breakfast – I had 2 fried eggs on English muffins and sautéed mushrooms – before disembarkation.

We waited close to an hour to disembark from the ship. Below is the number of people waiting along with us for the announcement to disembark from the ship.



Finally, we managed to get off the ship, and onto the train – The Midnight Sun Express – which would take us to Denali National Park.

Initially stated as 9 and a half hours… but became an actual 11 hours.



Me and my mom on the train, still happy before the journey actually commences.



The inside view of the carriage, which squished 82 people together (later to be considered a recipe for disaster).



Okay, now the whole happy family! Hee hee. It’s early morning baby!



This is the view tt you get from the train on a grey Alaskan morning. Gloomy and overcast, but still beautiful.



And one or two more for the road (literally)…



We got to see more bald eagles on the way to Denali. Unfortunately I didn’t get to photograph them. We also saw meese… *cough*… I mean, moose… about 5 of them in total to be exact. We saw 1 walking across the train tracks behind the train after the train started moving, and then another 2 more on the right hand side walking around in the field. I took photos of both these two, but my camera doesn’t zoom in close enough, so you can’t really see them as anything more than specks. *sigh*





For some reason we got hungry before long, so we decided to go downstairs to the dining room to scavenge for food. Well, I ended up ordering Alaska’s “award-winning reindeer chilli”.



Served in a sourdough bread bowl and complete with tri-coloured nachos and salsa. Tastes like beef.



Me and my reindeer. Cute and furry when alive, yummy when dead. Hee hee. Yes I am such the quintessential carnivore.

Anyway we saw our fourth and fifth moose during our lunch. This time they were upclose running alongside the train. I could make out their features and eyes and bodies as they ran; but because I was too busy eating I didn’t have the time to take a photo. Oh well.

After lunch the next 7 hours on the train were pure torture. Couldn’t really sleep, couldn’t really read, was bored out of my mind… So I decided to go downstairs for some fresh cold mountain air and to take more photos.

So here is the scenic photo series taken from the train.

First up: the tracks. And the change of scenery as we pass through different landscapes.













More mountains and lakes as the skies clear…









The Hurricane Gorge; a treacherous 270 foot drop from the bridge.





A cute house in the middle of nowhere…



Me on the back of the train in the meantime. YES it is very cold and very windy. I had to wear my gloves and pull up my hood just to stay on the back, and this is why…



Alaskan summer, and the snow hasn’t melted yet.



Ooh! And then there is caribou! Caribou are mountain goats. Ben and I saw a group of them while we were driving from the Rockies on towards Edmonton. Anyway we saw some more today!



But once again, my camera’s zoom capabilities suck big time. So too bad, all you see are 3 animals feeding. Wahaha. But still cute and furry. Hee hee.





Finally, past 7pm after over 11 hours on the train, we finally reached Denali National Park. We got off and took a coach to our mountain lodge – the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge.





This is the outside of our room…



And the inside…

And coz the view from our room oversees the Menana River, so this is what we see when we look out from our balcony.





For dinner, we headed to the Summit Dining Room, where we had New England Clam Chowder and Dungeness Crab Clusters for our started, and among the 3 of us we shared a roasted prime rib of pork with sautéed peaches and Yukon potatoes; grilled Alaskan salmon with the same potatoes and a creamy herb butter sauce; and a grilled New York sirloin steak with a massive baked Yukon potato topped with butter, sour cream and cheddar cheese. Dessert was a turtle cheesecake, which consists of creamy cheese cake with a thick rich and creamy chocolate fudge base layer and a caramel top, along with chopped pecan nuts.



Oh, and the sun set at 11.19pm tonight. So this is how the sky looks like at 11pm.