The Last Frontier

 When my granddaughter, Anika, graduated from 8^th grade, I was rather shocked. Not that she had graduated (because she is brilliant, of course), but that she was already old enough to start high school. The proverbial “Where has the time gone?” hit hard. In an attempt to hold on to her a little longer, I decided to give her the gift of travel. Of course, it really was a selfish gift because she would have to travel with me and I would get to spend one-on-one time with her. Clever, I am.

I told her that we could go anyplace in continental North America – except for Mexico. A few places rose to the top of the list. One was a train ride up to Churchill, Manitoba to see the remaining few polar bears. The second choice was traveling east to the green hills of colonial Vermont. Third, Yosemite – because everybody needs to go there at least once in their lifetime. I ran across an article about riding a train through Alaska and there was no need to make any further decisions. Alaska here we come!!!

Alaska Railroads has several different packages with different interests. We chose the Real Alaska Tour because it seemed to cover several different areas of Alaska with different excursions that sounded like great fun. Spoiler alert: It was GREAT FUN!

We flew into Anchorage and were shuttled to The Lakefront Anchorage hotel where we were promised Lake views. Granted, it was midnight and rather dark, but it sure looked like we had a stunning view into the parking lot. That is okay, it was late and we had to be at the train depot at the ungodly hour of 5:45 a.m.

The Coastal Classic took us to Seward. We were in the Gold Star class which meant that our train car had giant windows, they fed us breakfast in the dining car, complete with white linen tablecloths. The five-hour trip went fairly quickly because not only did we dine, but we could also walk around to an outside viewing platform.

The first half of the car was down at breakfast.  
Check out the windows!

The 1964 earthquake, which was the 2nd most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the world, caused portions of southcentral Alaska to drop four inches.  They told us that that is why the trees died.