Fine Dining in Anchorage with Old Friends

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Our final tour of this cruise began this morning with a quick trip to the Lido, anticipating an early morning docking in Anchorage. We mustered in the Showroom to get our “Pink 2” stickers, and had to wait for the announcement that we were clear to leave the ship. Although we were ready, the captain had to wait for the tides to come in and our scheduled time for disembarking came and went. There was some concern about getting off in time; because, we had a train to catch. The tour operators must have also been concerned; since, we were told that we wouldn’t be given our train tickets and food vouchers onboard, but would proceed directly to the train station and pick them up there before boarding. I took the time to catch up on Word Crack games in progress that I was playing; and, even played a game with Sharon. They did hold the train for us for about ten minutes; but, there really was only so much that they can do. The train has a schedule to keep, and part of that schedule is passing through that final tunnel into Whittier, the longest tunnel in the world shared by trains and cars, and it has rigid on the half hour time tables for traffic flow, and trains first followed by cars. We boarded our coach and found our assigned seating. We sat on the left side of the coach leaving Anchorage, and from our experience on this trip the preferred side for seating is the right side for scenic viewing, not that there really was much we could do about that on this filled to capacity train. There was good viewing of an eagle high in a tree perched in its nest. The guide noted that there are young eaglets in the nest and there is almost always a parent present when the train passes by.

We stopped to pick up some additional passengers, and a couple of people got off at the first whistle stop. We then proceeded through Portage; where, we would be getting off later in the day and proceeding by coach back to the ship. We then went through two fairly long tunnels, the second one being the one shared with cars. We had to wait for a bit until it was our turn to proceed. The tunnel had been built at the beginning of World War II to provide rail access to Whittier which was seen as a more secure and protected port than Anchorage. Sharon remembers her first Alaska cruise in 1986 where they landed in Whittier and then had to board school buses which then drove up onto flatbed train cars to go thru the tunnel and then on the Anchorage.

We arrived in Whittier and saw a smaller Princess ship docked. The waters were a beautiful bluish aquamarine, and had granite and glacial backdrops that were quite impressive. We had about forty-five minutes to walk around and take pictures. I walked around to take a picture of the front of the train, and observed a father snapping a picture of his five year old son climbing on the front of the engine car. When the engineer saw what was going on he stepped out and from the hand gestures he was making towards the father I surmised that he was not a happy camper. I suppose he has a point. A running engine is probably not where you want someone’s child touching, climbing on or poking their little fingers into.

We left Whittier, went back through the two tunnels and then stopped at portage and eventually at Spencer Glacier Whistle Stop. Quite a few people got off here to go for a hike around Spencer lake and another group to take a rafting trip. We’d actually stopped a bit before Spencer to pick up their rafts. We then headed up towards Grandview to see glaciers only accessible by train. There were six more tunnels to pass through. After each one there were steep views of a narrow gorge and flowing water below, and with each tunnel the view became increasingly impressive. Several glaciers were visible from either side in the distance. We went past the Grandview Whistle stop to proceed to see one last glacier, with its hues of blue iridescent in the sunlight. The train then reversed the engines and took us back to Grandview were we were given one-half hour to take a meandering path up to the viewing platform. A brick out house was also available at the stop. The long level walk to the first bend in the path is well worth the hike to see the mountains and the catch basin filled with water. It’s then just a gradual uphill hike along the ridge to the viewing platform. We’d been cautioned that “There’re bears in them thar woods.” And we certainly spotted evidence of that along the trail that we walked.

Back on the train, heading back on down the mountain, the grade was steeper than the maximum 1% grade that the old steam engines could barely manage. One section there was a large loop and if you were in the back of the train you could look out the side window and see the engine. The engineer spotted a moose on the tracks up ahead; but, by the time we reached that spot the moose had disappeared into the woods.

Heading back towards Anchorage the tides were very low in the Turnagain basin. The name “Turnagain” came from annotations that Captain Cook had made on his map when searching for the Northwest Passage, having hoped that this arm would be what he was looking for, he had lamented that he had to turn again in his notes. Someone later thought that he had named this body of water what it is still called today. Due to the low tides, all we could see from the bus coach were the muddy flats soaked with glacial silt. We weren’t able to spot any of the whitish beluga whales that are often seen in these waters; and, which Sharon and I had spotted four years ago when we’d taken the bus to Whittier for our nature and glacier cruise (we saw otters and a calving glacier).

We got back to Anchorage and we were met at the train station where we were dropped off by Ron and Debbie. Ron had previously worked with Sharon but now lives in Minnesota. We walked to a couple of nearby restaurants. The first was too crowded, although we dropped so Ron could say hi to a couple that had been on the same Princess cruise that had dropped them off a couple days earlier. A few blocks away we found a restaurant that had open seating and we found a booth. Sharon ordered the halibut fish and chips and I had the spicy halibut fish tacos with chili aioli. For someone who doesn’t like fish, Sharon sure seems to be eating a lot of it on this trip! The ale battered fish was some of the best that she’s had yet! After dinner we all got our pictures taken in front of a public garden featuring some giant colorful gladiolas. Sharon will send this to others who had been in her group at that company whose name we shall not mention, saying “Look who we ran into in Alaska.”



We caught the shuttle back to the Statendam before the 9:30 PM all aboard. We went back to the cabin. I wrote down some notes for the blog and Sharon went to the piano bar for a while and then to watch some of the Philippino crew show, which she said was excellent. I was asleep when she came back to the cabin, and she said something about our Trivia Team having won (without us) so our team should still be in first place. She also said that the only question that they’d missed was “What was Mickey Mouse’s original name?” Through the fog of sleep I managed to mutter “Mortimer”. And I hear Sharon say incredulously “You knew that?” Our team would have gotten that elusive perfect score if we’d all been there, something Ross has been hoping for since we started, saying that it did happen on the previous cruise. Sharon had found out that Ross had just started as cruise director on the Statendam on the previous cruise.

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