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Cruising Alaska Works Best on Land

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

June 29, 2007

During its short summer season, the 49th state is a vast outdoor zoo, with eagles above, whales below, and all kinds of other wildlife cavorting in plain view.

Though getting there consumes the better part of a day for most visitors, the trip is worth the effort, especially now that there's a land tour that combines car and train travel while covering considerably more territory than an Inside Passage cruise.

The do-it-yourself approach features a 9-day, 8-night itinerary that allows ample time for personalized photo ops – something bus tours don’t.

Participants fly into Anchorage, pick up a rental car the next morning, then drive south to Seward before heading north to Alyeska, Talkeetna, and Fairbanks. After turning in their car, they complete the trip on a two-day train ride that includes an overnight stay in Denali National Park.

Including the Alaska Marine Highway and the Alaska Railroad, the state’s Scenic Byways include 11 routes, covering more than 4,700 miles. But most of the state remains so remote that roads don’t reach far beyond the north-south corridor from Fairbanks to Anchorage.

Juneau, the capital, is accessible only by air or sea, while it’s equally impossible to drive to Nome, western terminus of the 1,000-mile Iditarod sled-dog race.

Alaskans live on the wild side: their state is one-fifth the size of the Lower 48 combined but has less than 1 per cent of the nation’s paved roads.

One of them, the Seward Highway, must have been built by camera buffs. Stretching 127 miles along a vast body of water called the Turnagain Arm, this All-American Road is a National Forest Scenic Byway that passes a wetlands habitat, glaciers, gold mines, and mountains.

At Portage Glacier, visitors from their east are invariably surprised at their first glimpse of blue ice, on the mv Ptarmigan.

Seward

The drive ends in Seward, a Resurrection Bay fishing village named for Secretary of State William H. Seward, who purchased Alaska from Russia for two cents an acre in 1867. A port of call for cruise ships, the compact town (pop. 3000) contains historic buildings, gift shops, and the Alaska Sealife Center, a combination aquarium and science museum.

There are also remnants of the devastating Good Friday Earthquake, a 1964 seismic event that registered a record 9.2 in magnitude (the southern Alaska coast has about 25 too-small-to-feel quakes per day).

A five-hour voyage into the 580,000-acre Kenai Fjords National Park provides photogenic vistas, animal encounters, and a look at the largest icefield on the North American continent. At 35 miles long, 20 miles wide, and a half-mile deep, the Harding Icefield is bigger than Rhode Island.

Marine life is everywhere: four species of salmon, hefty halibut, sea lions, harbor seals, sea otters, porpoises, puffins, and whale varieties that range from Orca to fin, gray, humpback, and minke.

Thirty species of sea birds, including bald eagles, fish in the fjords, vying for food with bears, moose, and mountain goats. Seventy-five miles up the road from Seward is Alyeska, one of the state’s few year-round resorts. Ski season sometimes extends into June, with the help of a 60-passenger tram to the 2,300-foot summit of Alyeska Mountain. Once there, the views of Turnagain Arm – a portion of Cook Inlet best-known for dramatic tidal changes – look better than the actual runs.

The drive from Alyeska, to Talkeetna, inspiration for Northern Exposure, bisects Anchorage and consumes 150 miles. But most of the route is strikingly photogenic – especially along the 356-mile Parks Highway that meanders from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

Talkeetna

A good stopping place en route is Talkeetna, an old mining town and trading post with one stop sign and one parking meter (not surprisingly, it’s broken). The aptly-named "Gateway to Mt. McKinley" sprang up at the confluence of three rivers but even the arrival of the railroad hasn’t spurred much expansion.

The town of 800 grows mainly in summer, the peak season for climbing and sightseeing by airplane. The average climb takes 17 days but only half of all expeditions succeed in reaching the 20,320-foot summit.

Fairbanks, named for a politician who predated the actor, is the only stop on the tour with a multiple-night stay. That’s because there’s much to do in the state’s second-largest city (pop. 82,000).

Choices range from Pioneer Park, an amusement park without admission charge, to Alaska Goldpanners baseball, a one-time training ground for Dave Winfield, Tom Seaver, and other future Hall of Famers.

There’s also a Farmer’s Market, paddlewheel steamboat cruise aboard the Tanana Chief, and a narrated local bus tour that stops at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, an 800-mile project that cost $8 billion, and Gold Dredge No. 8, where visitors can try their own luck at panning for gold. There’s still gold in the hills and streams that surround the area.

After two nights in Fairbanks, Gray Line of Alaska tour participants start their return trip to Anchorage by train.

McKinley Explorer

The Alaska Railroad is a steel lifeline for both visitors and residents. From Fairbanks, it stretches nearly 500 miles south to Seward through a maze of tunnels and trestles, one of them a 915-foot bridge that towers 296 feet over Hurricane Creek.

Utilizing some of the original Panama Canal construction equipment, the line opened in 1923 after President Warren G. Harding drove the last spike. It was one of his last acts in office, since he died days later in San Francisco. His name lives on at Harding Ice Field, home to huge glaciers in south central Alaska.

Aboard the McKinley Explorer – a series of plush, two-level rail cars topped by domes – passengers relax in comfortable seats while watching some of the world’s most spectacular scenery, pinpointed in a mile-by-mile guidebook. Frequent announcements help.

There’s bar service on the top level and meal service below – in a dining car featuring food and service familiar to those who recall the golden era of train travel during the ‘50s. In a concession to the 21st century, a satellite-controlled audio system provides mile-by-mile information.

Even though there are reserved seat assignments on the 66-passenger cars, people seldom sit still – especially when someone announces a sighting of a moose or a bear.

Denali

In Denali, where the southbound train from Fairbanks makes its only stop, visitors have a better chance of seeing a moose than the famous mountain.

Obscured by cloud cover nearly 80 per cent of the time, Mt. McKinley peeks out only occasionally – but sometimes shows her face during a tundra wilderness tour that lives up to its name: it takes wide-eyed visitors 53 miles up winding dirt roads that cross several climate zones during the seven-hour duration. Crossing even a piece of a park with six million acres (larger than Massachusetts) takes time.

Visitors won’t see the Northern Lights, not visible during long summer days, but could see anything else, from nesting eagles to gold-coated bears fishing for salmon. Though it seems light-years away, Denali (Athabascan for "The High One") actually lies 121 miles south of Fairbanks, 237 miles north of Anchorage, and 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Before the noontime train ride south, out-of-towners should sample the daily sled-dog demonstration, utilizing wooden carts on dirt paths. The dogs, primarily Siberian Huskies that love to run, bark wildly – saying "Pick me! Pick me!" – during the pre-demonstration selection process. In winter, the 90-year-old preserve is the only national park patrolled by dog-sled.

Dogs remain an important part of life in Alaska, where they were used by Eskimos, Indians, Russians, and prospectors long before dog-sled racing became popular (or notorius, depending on your point of view).

For humans, layered windbreakers are wise investments to protect against the wet summer climate. Dressing up for dinner means flannels and jeans; the only ties seen in Alaska hold the railroad tracks together.

Even hotel dining rooms don’t worry about a dress code. That rule covers all the hotels used in the tour, including the Westmark Anchorage, Edgewater (Seward), Alyeska Prince (Girwood), Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, Pike’s Waterfront Lodge (Fairbanks), and McKinley Chalet Resort (Denali).

Gray Line of Alaska runs a wide variety of tours, ranging in length from one night to two weeks, and covers all corners of the 49th state. Summer season runs from mid-May to mid-September, with most departing from the air gateways of Anchorage or Fairbanks.

Anchorage, the state’s largest city, has 300,000 residents and a location that is equidistant from New York and Tokyo and three hours by air from Seattle. Though surrounded by the Chugach Mountains, it has an elevation of only 38 feet and a benign climate warmed by the Japanese currents of the Pacific.

The sun never sets on June 21, the date of the Summer Solstice, and the time remains a constant four hours behind the East Coast.

Alaska Airlines links Anchorage with points east, making the long trip possible with only one plane change (Seattle).

For further information on the organized land tour, contact Gray Line of Alaska, 300 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119 (Tel. 800-544-2206, Fax 206-301-5282, www.graylineofalaska.com).

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