On July 13th, we headed south from Fairbanks to Denali National Park.
From a tour bus, on our ride from the hotel to the train.
All the rest of these were taken from the south-bound train.
Coal, and tankers. We were told there was a refinery for jet fuel in or near Fairbanks, and that these tankers would carry the jet fuel to Anchorage. The coal is burned locally for power, and also is exported (Korea was mentioned as one destination).
One of the things that can be frustrating about a tour is that you don't get to choose how long you stay in any place. It is tantalizing to read about museums and other interesting places, and not be able to visit. We saw the University of Alaska Museum of the North from a distance several times, but weren't able to stop in.......
I love the shadow of the right-side part on the left part.....
This is the kind of picture that causes my teeth to gnash. The upper right is totally overexposed, but I don't want to crop off the right side, because the coolest reflection is over there................
Most the trees around Fairbanks are pointy.
We ate breakfast on the train. The dining room was very fancy, and the food was good. Sconce on wall between booths.
Our guide on this trip was extremely knowledgeable about history as well as Alaska. He was full of interesting stories. We discovered, after breakfast, that there was a platform at the end of the train cars where you could stand outside to take pics (no infernal windowglare). It was hard for me to go down there, though I knew the pics would be better, because I didn't want to miss hearing what Richard had to say.... His career had been in the foreign service, and now he is retired, living near Washington, DC, and working in Alaska in the summers......
It was another gorgeous day. There are mile markers all along the route, so you can tell exactly where you are.
Most of the Alaskan Railroad is exactly one track. In a few places, there are two, enabling a train going one way to get over for a few minutes so a train going the other way can pass by.
The people of Alaska have made choices about spending public money that foster a strong community feeling. Supporting people who live in unpopulated areas by subsidising transportation is one of these choices. In the southeast, where the only way to get from here to there is by water or air, the ferries are subsidized. The Alaskan Railroad is one of the few trains that will stop (on certain days, at least) for people who stand by the tracks and flag it down.
Glaciers are very hard on the landscape. They pick up rocks (boulders, hills, mountaintops) as they grind inevitably downward. Stony stuff in the frozen mass helps pulverize anything the ice river passes over. Glacially fed streams and rivers are full of the consequences -- very (very) fine silt, which is why they are gray.
We are pretty near Denali now. The black line in the rock is coal.
In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, a link to the next one is here.
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