Talkeetna to Denali

On Sunday morning, we headed back to town a few hours before we had to catch our train from Talkeetna to Denali. We wanted to try the Roadhouse and their legendary pastries, but there were no seats to be had. We walked down the road to Latitude 62, a restaurant on the main level of a small motel. There, Mac had a breakfast burrito with reindeer sausage. I had the most amazing blueberry pancake I’ve ever tasted with a side of reindeer sausage. If you’re curious, reindeer is the domesticated breed of caribou, and it tastes somewhere in between beef and venison.

We hopped on the train for the four-ish hour ride from Talkeetna to Denali National Park. This car had two benches on either side of a table with the dining car below it. We ate lunch on this train (we split caribou chili nachos and a brownie sundae). The train winds up through the mountains and along several rivers, and the views on the trip north were stunning, even if the day wasn’t overly clear. The cloud coverage thickened as we got closer to the park, so no views of Denali for us. The tracks pass over 600 feet above Hurricane Gulch on a 300-foot long trestle bridge, the longest on the railroad. We also saw a bald eagle on an outcropping in the gulch. I really enjoyed the scenery on this leg of the trip and took tons of photos.

We arrived at the Denali train station (across the road from the park entrance) around 5 pm and boarded a bus to our hotel. This is when we found out that we were actually staying at a Holland America property. While we didn’t mind, it would’ve been nice if someone had told us before then. The tour group on our bus had spent the whole trip together, so it was kind of awkward being the only couple under 65.