Day 5 – Alaska Railroad to Denali

Alaska Railroad Gold Class Service Car

Another early start today as we needed to be at the Anchorage train station at 7am to catch the Denali Star train up to Denali National Park.  The ride is rather long taking about 7 hours long to travel the 230 miles to reach the park.  The train probably averages only about 30 mph.  In the early days, you could only reach Denali by train and it still remains the most popular way to get there.


Today the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating and we travelled in a light rain almost the whole way.  We were in an observation car with a domed glass ceiling, but to be honest the views were pretty mundane until you get near the park where you start to see mountains and glacial streams for the last hour or so.  One nice feature was that our car had an open platform where you can observe nature without being blocked by glass.  We spotted two moose and some bald eagles along the way, but that was about it animal-wise.


We arrived at McKinley Village Lodge where we are staying for two nights and that turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  Our recent experience at staying in or around the National Parks hasn’t been good, but this was a nice room and the lodge was recently remodeled.  Further, since we selected the all-inclusive package, we found the meals to all be very good, including the Cabin Night Dinner Theater which we attended today.  The show itself was pretty hokey, but I think it is pretty hard to teach a history lesson about Denali in musical form.