Glacier Discovery Train Ride

 This train runs out of Anchorage

Nice rail cars with the seating up high with big windows. The cafe and restrooms are on the first deck, hence the lack of windows.

It was a nice, mostly sunny day. All of the seats were two across with a table in between. We had a young Chinese girl sitting across from us. She was traveling alone and was going to Whittier to take a boat ride around Prince William Sound for the day. She had just graduated from Emory University in Atlanta and was visiting Alaska for a few days on her way to Hawaii to see a friend, and then back to China as her student visa was expiring. 

Princess Cruise lines had a ship in Whittier when we arrived. This boat left Vancouver and did a 7 day cruise ending in Whittier.

 This is the view as the train enters the one lane tunnel that goes 2.8 miles through the mountain to Whittier. The train track and road are on the same surface. The road is opened one way at a time, around the train schedules. There is a large staging area at both entrances for all the vehicles to wait their turn.

 

 This was a real nice bridge built for hikers to access a lake and one of the glaciers in the distance.

 

 We got lucky with the weather, it was beautiful and not too cold in Whittier. The surrounding mountains all had snow and large waterfalls, pictures could never do justice to the wonder of the views.

 

 Some of the train route ran along the Seward highway and the Turnagain Arm, we got a chance to see all the other RV'ers coming and going to the Kenai peninsula. We saw a number of Dall sheep on the mountains along the tracks, and also saw some of the fire crews that were there to fight the McHugh fire that has been burning along the highway for about a week now.

 

 The Turnagain Arm is one of the few places in the world where the incoming and outgoing tides meet each other and form a wave as much as 6 feet high. The locals put on wet suits and surf the tide for miles as it comes into the bay. We got lucky enough to witness the wave come in, but it was probably only 3-4 feet high today.