Friday Night in Anchorage

Leftover Thursday thoughts - Almost all of the "workers" we have talked to come up here to work the summer months and then return to the lower 48 states for the remaining 7-8 months of the year. Most of them are young, 20's & 30's, with a few in their 40's. Many of them are college students. During supper last night we briefly talked to 2 young "busboys", one is from Bulgaria the other from Serbia. I would like to hear an explanation of why the resorts must hire foreign naionals when our youth unemployment is high.

Trees - the vast majority of trees we have seen are either spruce (very similar in looks to short needle pine trees), aspen or birch. It is RARE to see a spruce tree with a trunk larger than 6" in diameter. We were told that these trees might be 50-100 years old. The soil is so poor, and the weather so harsh, that they grow VERY SLOWLY. It makes me wonder where settlers found large enough trees to build cabins. Perhaps all the 10" and larger trees were cut down 50 plus years ago. In the Rocky Mountains I think tree don't grow above 10-12,000 feet above sea level. In Denali the treeline is about 4,000'.

Kathy was up early this morning. She finally rolled me out of bed around 7:30. We went up to the main lodge for breakfast and to wait on the bus to take us to the train for our 8 hour trip to Anchorage. We finished a leisurely breaksfast around 8:40 and casually strolled to the lobby to wait for the bus, which we both knew left some time after 9:00. Kathy then took a look at our itinerary and almost panicked when she saw that the last bus for the train left at 8:45. We weren't the last ones on the bus, but there weren't many behind us.

The train tour guy, who was probably in his late 20's, is a 3rd generation Alaskan. His grandfather drove his family up here in a WWII army surplus jeep after his grandfather getting out of the service. It took them months to get to Alaska from Utah. The weather was great again today and we were able to get great views of Denali from the train. He said the views the past 2 days in a row were the best he had ever seen during his lifetime.

The train runs slow. Average from Denali to Anchorage is about 35 mph with occasional spurts up to 50 mph. It was comfortable except for being to hot inside the glass domed cars. Every time railroad staff got the temperature down to a comfortable level there were several people who whined about being cold. (Today's high in Anchorage was 73)
This was one of the first bridges we crossed, don't remember it's name.

 Later we crossed the Hurricane Gulch bridge. A 918' span with tracks 296' above the water. It was build by the American Bridge company in 1921. Today it would take 10 times longer to get through the government red tape than it did to build back then.

Some folks who live "off the grid" are near the railway A couple of days a week, if they signal the train with a white flag placed near the track, the train will stop, pick them up and take them to either Fairbanks or Anchorage.

 View to the west from our hotel room,

 Snow capped mountains down the street to the north.

 We went out walking around Anchorage looking for a place to eat. Two girls were passing out samples of ice cream. Kathy decided she wanted to eat dessert first. Before going into the ice cream shop she had to check out Bear Air.

 We passed by a hot dog cart looking for a place that offered decent looking meals, but didn't find one. We went back to the hot dog cart and got a couple of reindeer dogs. The were good.

Time for a shower and bed. God is good, may He bless you and yours.
PS. Please for give typos and sentences that don't sound right. I'm using my phone & tablet to do these posts.