On to Denali! (Sunday)

Today we go from Talkeetna to Denali. We had a leisurely morning as we didn't have to have our luggage out until about 9:30am. We ate breakfast at the Talkeetna lodge restaurant. Then they bused us to the train depot. There we were notified that the train was going to be 30 minutes late. So they wanted us to wait off the bus so that we could load faster, but it meant we had to spend a lot of time standing around. Finally, the train came about 40 minutes late (see photo).

We had another four-hour train ride. This time we had lunch on the train. We didn't get to go down for lunch until almost 1:30, so I was pretty crabby by then. But the food was good. Sandra had a French dip sandwich and I had reindeer chili. We split a brownie with ice cream for dessert. 

On the ride there we saw more beautiful countryside. We saw a valley where the beavers had eaten all the vegetation. They were no longer in the valley, but we saw their abandoned lodge. On one pond we saw trumpeter swans. At a couple of places along the road, people waved at us (see photo). These people live out in remote areas where the only access is by train. They can go to the train tracks and wave a flag and the regular passenger train will stop for them.

We arrived at the Denali Train Station late in the afternoon. Skookum met us there and took us to the McKinley Village Lodge where we are staying about 7 miles from the park entrance. It's right on a river that forms a boundary of the park. So the view from our window is of the creek and across from it trees in the park (see photo). Very lovely. Our room is comfortable, but not as luxurious as our other accommodations ha been.

We were disappointed that we arrived so late and really didn't have time to walk in the park. The lodge has a shuttle, but we would barely have any time in the park if we were to make the last shuttle back. But we decided to go see the visitor center. It was small, but had a nice display of different animals you might see in the park. We walked around the outside of the center and a short way down one of the trails (see photo). Then we went to wait for the last shuttle, but it didn't come. A shuttle from a different lodge offered to drop us off, so we took him up on it.

We got back to the lodge and had dinner at their restaurant (crab cakes and seafood chowder for Sandra and fish and chips for me). After, we worked on our blog for a while. We can't get 3G here, but the lodge has free wifi. As our usual routine, we played some  pinochle on our iPads for a while and then went to bed.