Alaska - Day 10 - Riding the Alaska Railroad was a "hurry up and wait" day

Our friends, Connie and Steven, have joined us for many travel adventures. They drove to Minnesota to see Voyageurs National Park, they drove to New Mexico to ATV in the mountains, they flew to North Carolina to meet us for the Outer Banks . . . So they knew what they were getting themselves into when they decided to fly to Alaska to hang out with us for two weeks. Their flight landed in Anchorage in the middle of the night, and they arrived to our hotel around 1:45 a.m. It was a short night for them, as we were up at 7:30 a.m. We took the motel shuttle to the railroad station for check-in at 8:45 a.m. We're not sure why we needed to arrive an hour before the train left the station, but we are checked in and ready to roll for our 9:45 trip on the Glacier Discovery Train.

If you look closely at the picture above, you will see that one of the train cars is taller than the rest. We had requested seats on the top level of that car to get the best views.

Every passenger has an assigned seat, and we were glad to have a booth for the four of us, as we passed by the Turnagain Arm.

While given assigned seats, passengers are free to move about the train any time. We did some exploring and found that while the taller car was completely booked, this car had only a few passengers today.

There were also plenty of extra wide cushy reclining seats in another car. Later in the season the trains might be fuller, but we obviously had places to roam today.

We're sad that our rainy weather is continuing, so our views out the train windows were a little less spectacular than we had hoped. This is the first day that the Glacier Discovery train is running, and we had a few glitches in the schedule. We stopped at the Girdwood Station, and waited longer than usual. 

Part of our ride was in the dark, as we went through two different tunnels. We had to arrive at the second one--the famous Anton Anderson Tunnel--at a specific time. This one-way tunnel is shared with vehicle traffic. Eastbound cars get their turn to go through the tunnel on the half-hour, and westbound vehicles get their turn at the top of the hour. Trains like ours have a specific time to travel through the tunnel so we don't meet anybody heading in the opposite direction. It was raining when we approached the tunnel.

It's a ten minute ride in the dark through this 2.6-mile tunnel blasted through a mountain. We had 2600 feet of rock and 150 feet of glacier on top of us as we chugged through. Just a few minutes after we exited the tunnel, we were in the town of Whittier.

Many people on our train were meeting boats to go on cruises out of the Whittier Harbor, similar to the one we took a couple days ago in Seward. We're sorry that they're not going to have the sunny day we enjoyed. The four of us decided to use the 45-minute train stop to explore the town in the rain. We bundled up in our coats and rain gear and left the train. We are required to wear masks while on the train, so we still have ours on. We found that those masks kept our faces warm today.

We checked out the marina,

and had enough time to walk to the end of the harbor. It was a nice town, but not nearly as inviting as our sunny day in Seward a few days ago.

Denisa took pictures of Begich Tower, at the base of one of the mountains that surround the bay.

It was built as a military housing unit when Whittier was an important secret ice-free port during World War II. Today this 14-story building has been re-purposed. It houses 85% of Whittier's full-time residents, plus the police station, grocery store, medical clinic, post office, church, and a convenience store. Whittier is called a "community under one roof" because most of the townspeople live and do business here.

We had to be back to our train in 45 minutes, because we had another appointment to get through the Anderson Tunnel in the opposite direction.

We made it back through the tunnel, and then we were supposed to turn south towards our destination at Spencer Glacier. But instead, our train stopped and we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Thirty minutes later we started rolling again. But that meant that we arrived at the Spencer Glacier stop thirty minutes later than we had planned.

That is important because this group of four hikers was planning a big hike, and we really needed that thirty minutes! We have donned our rain gear, but this is the first time today that we're not seeing rain.

Everyone else on the train is planning to make the short 1.3 mile hike with the ranger to the "Glacier Viewing Area" at the end of Spencer Lake. But we were planning to hike the extra 2 miles to the "Spencer Glacier Overlook" at the other end of the lake.

We were hiking fast, so we were some of the first to arrive at the lake. We got a quick group picture.

Icebergs with interesting shapes were floating in the lake, and a few kayakers were having a good time rowing around them.

This iceberg was even fun to kayak through! We have wondered into another of God's wonders! We are really wishing for our kayak right now.

But we don't have time to wish too long--we have a destination to make. We are starting to peel off layers of rain gear as our fast pace is making us sweat.

The other reason to sweat is the fact that we are definitely in bear country. We knew that when we saw the first pile of bear scat on the trail. Then we saw pile 2, and pile 3, and pile 4 . . . We would see seven piles of fresh bear scat on our hike today--all of it on the more remote section after the first view point where everyone else stopped.

We've seen trail signs that indicate that bikers yield to hikers and hikers yield to horses, etc. But this is the first sign that includes a bear. It looks like everyone is supposed to yield to the bears!

So while we are hiking as fast as we can, we are also making lots of noise so we don't surprise a bear on the trail. We're also not sure if we have enough time for a bear encounter because we have a train to catch!

We have this hike carefully timed. We know that we have to be back to the train by 4:30. Missing the train is not an option, as it runs only once each day and there are no other vehicles that can get to this remote area around Spencer Glacier. We really don't want to have to spend the night here with the bears! So we know we have to turn around and give ourselves the same amount of time to get back. But our leader kept pushing and pushing, and we finally did get to the overlook at the end of the trail!

We sure would have loved to have that extra thirty minutes now, so we could have actually enjoyed our accomplishment! We had to laugh later when we realized that we didn't have a good picture from our closest vantage point with the glacier.

We did take a picture of the unusually-shaped icebergs on the far end of the lake.

Then we are back on the race track, walking as fast as we can back towards the train. You might notice that we are trying to shed layers, but we don't have the time to stop and pull off our air-tight-rainproof pants we are wearing over our jeans. 

When we saw we were going to make it on time, we paused for one last picture at the foot of the lake, with the Spencer Glacier in the background.

The blue color of that glacier iceberg is beautiful!

We even paused long enough to take pictures of the new hiking bridges.  We ran right by it without stopping when we started this hike.

We're beginning to see other hikers now, slowly heading back to the train. Now we feel more comfortable that the train wouldn't leave this many people behind. We were the only people that attempted the longer hike, that took us 6.8 miles round-trip in record time. 

We actually got back to the train a few minutes before our 4:30 deadline. It was a little frustrating when the conductor stayed outside for an additional 15 minutes before they even started the process of leaving. We sure could have used that 15 minutes at the glacier! This is a "hurry up and wait" kind of day! We also found out from talking to him, that the reason for our thirty minute delay on the track was a computer glitch. It was the first day for this train to run this route this year, and the computer refused to let him turn the train onto the rails for the last leg of the trip to Spencer Glacier.

We were tired when we climbed back onto the train. At last we had time to peel off our rain pants, and we found that they were equally good at keeping moisture in. Our jeans underneath were soaking wet from our fast-paced hike today. The train finally got underway, but we soon made another stop along the river. We knew that some of the train passengers were taking a guided raft trip down the river that flows out of Spencer Lake. We were supposed to pick them up, but the rafts are nowhere to be seen.

While stopped here on the tracks, we got our only wildlife picture of the day. But the moose was so far away that even the good camera couldn't take a clear picture.

It was 45 minutes before the first raft appeared. We found out that they had a leisurely trip down the river, even stopping for cookies and hot chocolate--while we waited for them.

It was a full hour's wait before we had the six rafts and all the rafters loaded and could be underway. It sure would have been nice to have that extra hour at the glacier overlook during our hurried hike!

Today's experience reminds us why we don't like taking tours. You have to hurry to fit their schedule, and then have to wait to fit their schedule. We are spoiled travelers that are used to making our own schedule. The train is now back to the station at Portage, and passengers have two options. We could stay on the train and go back through the tunnel to pick up those cruise passengers that we dropped off earlier today in Whittier. That would be another 45 minute wait in Whittier, and two more trips through the tunnel. Or train passengers can board a bus that takes them the faster highway route back to Anchorage. We opted for the bus trip home since we should get back a couple hours sooner. We were in the front seat of the bus, with a big windshield view of the Turnagain Arm.

Our bus driver entertained us with Alaska stories all the way to the train station. He is also a pilot, and he told us that many Alaskans have an airplane instead of a second car. Sure enough, we passed neighborhoods with airplanes parked in the backyard of almost every home. The green strip behind the houses serves as a runway.

We stayed at Merrill Field Inn in Anchorage because it had a laundry facility and a free shuttle service. We have put both to good use during our stay. After our long railroad day, they picked us up at the train depot and shuttled us to a trendy pizza restaurant across the city that a friend had recommended to Steven. We didn't have many wildlife sightings, so Denisa took a picture of the moose on her plate here at Moose Tooth Cafe.

With an hour-long wait for a table and almost another hour before our pizza arrived to our table, we were all very hungry by the time we got to eat tonight. It was another "hurry up and wait" experience for today. It had been an especially long day for our friends that are still living in the Central Time Zone. Our Alaska Railroad experience was great to fill a day when we didn't have a rental vehicle, but we would say that we had some glitches to our rail trip today.