Sunday, June 13

On Sunday morning, we boarded the Alaskan Railroad for Denali where we would take a tour of the Denali National Park.

The following pictures were taken at the train depot and on the ride to Denali. Remember to click on thumbnail for larger picture.

The tour guide on the train was Michael Zlatkovski. He is a high school student and was selected out of a pool of several students for this assignment. He is a native of Russia and his family has worked very hard since coming to the United States. As we left the railroad, it was very fitting to hear Johnny Cash recordings on the speakers and of course, it was his train songs.

The site along Hurricane Gulch was beautiful. The creek is 296 feet below and the steel bridge span is 914 feet long.

Along the way, we could see damage from the earthquake that occurred on Good Friday of 1964. The earthquake measured over 9.2 on the scale and would have been much more of a disaster if Alaska had been heavily populated. We saw spruce that had died as a result of the earth surface dropping several feet and letting salt water come in that killed the trees.

Native Alaskans prefer to call Mt. McKinley,  Denali Mountain, which means "The Great One". It was officially  named Mt. McKinley after William McKinley, but it can be called by either name.

We arrived in Denali about 3:45 pm and transferred to  the Grande Denali Lodge up high on a mountain. We had a nice dinner in the Alpenglow Restaurant where we had a fantastic view of the town of Denali below.