We were picked up outside our room at the McKinley Chalet Resort for our trip to the railroad station.
Editor’s Note: At the request of his readers and in memory of Warner M. Montgomery, Ph.D, we will continue to publish his Adventure Travel stories for the time being.
Our 2010 trip to Alaska had begun with a flight to Vancouver where we boarded Holland America’s Volendam—a 620–crew, 1,440–passenger, 785–foot– long, 10–year–old cruise ship. We enjoyed ourselves during a three–night cruise to Skagway with stops at Juneau and the Tracy Arm glacier. From Skagway we went overland by rail, bus, and air to Whitehorse, Dawson City, Tok, Fairbanks, and Denali National Park. Our last leg was the McKinley Explorer train to Anchorage.
The Holland America Line owned the cruise ship, trains, buses, and hotels along the way. The company was founded in 1873 in Rotterdam as a shipping and passenger line serving the Americas. It is now based in Seattle as part of Carnival Corporation which owns Westmark Hotels, Worldwide Shore Services, Half Moon Cay in the Caribbean, and Princess Cruises.
The McKinley Explorer is composed of full dome cars that began running between Fairbanks and Anchorage in 1987. The cars are 18 feet high, 89 feet long, 10 feet wide, and can seat 88 guests and feed 44 at a time. The cars are, of course, heated, cooled, and smoke– free.
During our eight-anda half-hour trip we enjoyed cocktails and lunch, and cocktails and dinner. Along the way we passed Colorado (old coal mine), Honolulu (named by prospector who fancied warmer weather), Hurricane (high wind area), Curry (originally Dead Horse, site of 1930s luxury hotel), Big Beaver (swampy area), Talkeetna (Indian word for “river of plenty,” now a town of 900 people and one parking meter, where President McKinley stayed in 1923 when he came to drive the railroad’s Golden Spike), Sunshine (popular truck stop), Montana (airstrip for remote hunting and fishing), Willow (named for Sarah Palin’s daughter or vice versa), Nancy (recreation area), Houston (named for congressman who pushed through Alaska Railroad Bill in 1917, not Sam), and Wasilla (Chief Wasilla showed prospectors where gold was located, now a town of Mama Grizzlies).
Anchorage is 38 feet above sea level and home to 275,000 chilly folks, almost half the population of the state. We were bussed quickly to our hotel where we numbly fell asleep anticipating our early morning departure for Columbia.
The last time I was in Anchorage was in 1962 on my way to Peace Corps duty in Thailand. My fuzzy memory of that stopover was of the giant Kodiak bear in the airport. Before Linda and I got on the plane for Vancouver, I told her I wanted to find that bear again. On August 16, 2010, I found him still standing there. Some of his hair had fallen out, and he seemed to have a smirk on his face. As I passed he whispered, “Hey, buddy, whatcha been doing for the past 48 years?”
