you know why the Alaskan railroad is the best choice for transportation between
Anchorage and Seward Alaska. In this video we'll look at three reasons why
you really want to make that your choice for transportation and you'll get to go
with my family as we experience this amazing trip so welcome aboard the
coastal classic in the gold star dome service with my family and as you can
see it's an upper level dome car with amazing views well right now we're still
parked at the terminal in Anchorage but we're getting ready to head out here
momentarily looking out to the right side is in the
direction of trains movement you can see in a Cook Inlet which gives Anchorage
its connection to the scene we're headed towards Seward which is where we'll
board our cruise ship and you can see that we're traveling between the ocean
and neighborhoods there in Anchorage and as we continue to move out we'll get
farther and farther away we're going to come up here in just a minute on parters
Marsh which has kind of an interesting back story it was an area where the city
wanted to build a dump in times past and the schoolchildren used to come out here
to watch the birds and look at where the birds nested so the result was is there
was such an outcry that they turned it into a park and it's now available for
the public to use to come out and view all of the different kinds of water
birds that nest in this area I'm getting ready to come up on a whistle-stop here
shortly we won't really stop but there's a some outbuildings and a place where
there was a station and then they also have an old a steam engine
parked there on the siding and as we pull away seeing the trains starting to
pick up a little bit of speed the highways on our left side and it'll stay
there for a while and then it'll change sides be on the right side quick in a
view of turning an arm there we'll see some more of that in a minute
on the left you can start to see the coastal
range here Mount Alyeska the ski resort for that out of Anchorage is in that
area you can see now mountains really are on both sides of what is called
Turnagain arm and in the in the foreground you see these muddy flats in
Turnagain arm what those what that is is glacial silt that's come in Turnagain
arm is unique in that it has the second highest title change next to the Bay of
funding and that glacial silt poses a real danger to individuals not that
don't know their way around because it's very easy to get trapped in and it's
almost like quicksand and every year they they lose people that get stuck in
there when the tide is changing and there's nothing they can do to get them
out in time we're starting our climb up now into the mountain range we've gone
away from the the coast and we're moving seeing the mountains in a distance and
in the foreground there's kind of swampy area with a variety of different kinds
of trees there was a reported sighting of a moose as we went through this we
didn't see it but the engineer and potentially some of the others and in
earlier cars saw what you see over on the side now is a avalanche chute where
avalanches form on the peaks up above and they follow the Train down and and
wind up creating those piles of snow and this one we're not really sure where
this pile of snow came from we're sitting in the dining car as we're
moving along in just a second we're going to start to cross the plants a
river which the trains actually going to follow for quite a while up into the
mountains you can see the bridge there the train passes through a total of five
tunnels on the way up and to the right looking back along the train you can see
the you will see in a minute the Placer River running in this really narrow
Gorge we go through several of these tunnels like there was a total of five
what you see and down in the bottom of the canyon is the Placer River you'll
notice that the sides are really steam it's a kind of river looking at it
from above you think there's probably fishing that but then you look at those
canyon walls and you think those fish are gonna stay there it's just it's an
amazing view it's amazing that they were able to cut a railroad path along this
river as we head up towards its headwaters into another tunnel now as we
came out of that tunnel we also went right over a bridge that put the river
on the other side you'll see it's on the left side of the train as we're moving
forward and the the river is going to start to widen out here the canyon is
gonna widen out as we hit continue to climb an altitude the trains actually
going to come up here and stop in a minute so that it train going the other
direction will pass us and we'll get to enjoy the view of the river for a fee
for a few moments here and the water color when you look at it you'll see
that it's kind of a almost an aquamarine or a really light turquoise color that
is a result of the glacial silt that builds up or that gets washed down I
should say from the glaciers and that's what worse is all the way into Turnagain
arm obviously this is just one of many different sources that supply that silt
that makes turning an arm a bad place to wade in the distance there you can see
coming down the side of the mountain there's a one of just literally scores
of streams that we saw where the water is coming down from the snowmelt up
above and it makes a bunch of cascading waterfalls and we're stopped right now
alongside waiting for that train and that's the Placer River I'm going to
reposition here in just a second and you're gonna get a little better view up
the valley you can start to see the Kenai mountain range in the distance
there and as you can see now the access to the river the river is wider it's
moving a little slower though it's really pretty quick we're climbing now
up into into snow country and this climb is steep enough that they couldn't build
the the roadbed straight up the grain you know they couldn't just follow the
land actually had to build a series of
s-curves they were going to come up on in fact over to the left you can
actually see you that or the track is but they had to build these curves back
and forth to help the Train negotiate the the steep climb it has to main and
then there's quite a bit of snow cover up here the temperatures dropped
significantly and down in Anchorage there wasn't any snow on the ground
anywhere it was really fairly warm probably in the mid 60s
you can see the snow really covers most of the ground I kind of think they've
had fresh snow not too long in the past because the it just gave you the
appearance that it wasn't particularly old snow on some of the areas and you
see the distance the the s-curve and you can see the mountain range behind us and
like I said we're just continuing to climb up this climb up the side of the
mountain toward Grandview pass in a minute what you'll see I'm going to
pivot the camera around and what you'll see is Spencer glacier and it's really
hard to make out it because it sits in a valley and then in front of the valley
that's the glacier there's back up in the in that valley and it's kind of
obscured a little bit by the weather it's also obscured by the rocks that
cross in front of it in some point in the not-too-distant past the glacier
actually reached all the way to those rocks and the tracks passed fairly close
to the glacier but it's like the most lacers is starting to retreat again you
can see these giant sweeping s curves that we're making as we're making our
climb up then you'll see also I will come alongside the Placer River again
and what you'll find is is that the plants the river is starting to really
get narrow we will nor above many of its different sources and we're right at the
headwaters here at the glacier I'm sure that in the summer time that the amount
of water flowing out picks up compared to this early in the season but you get
a nice view here of the of the trees starting to leaf out and the mountain
range that would come up along there's the Placer River again now it's just a
little tiny stream instead of the raging torrent that it was
this is Kenai Lake and we've come over go through Grandview and we started down
toward Seward and there's a mountain on the other side that I thought was really
attractive again it's a great cloudy day so you don't get the full impact of it
but you can see that the water color and then just second I'm gonna look back
along the Train and what you'll see is is again we see this aqua color that
comes from the glacial silt that's suspended in the water and the Train
again just kind of hugs right up against the the shoreline of the Lake Kenai Lake
is the headwaters of the Kenai River you get a good sense of the color right
there there's the headwaters of the Kenai River which is a world-famous
salmon fishery and the train runs for about 22 miles right along the shoreline
we've crossed over a river now and we're headed down toward Seward in just a
minute we'll see the resurrection River off would be on our left side as the
training and looking in the direction of train movement you can start to see some
of the pinks as we move through here you have to look through the water droplets
on my camera lens sorry to say yeah this is the resurrection River and it
terminates in Resurrection Bay and it's a river that gets a lot of salmon move
up the river to spawn so this in the and later in the summer is the the
neighborhood buffet for all the Bears in the area to come gorge on salmon the
salmon come up here and spawn and die and the Bears say hmm tasty lunch and
then it rains starting to pick up some speed as we move that down towards
Seward you can get a sense of the difference in in this in the velocity of
the train as we're moving along just a second on the right side of the video
you'll start to see the resurrection a river again as you see all these little
channels of it and it's really amazing up in here and what will happen is again
this is prime bear viewing area during the salmon spawning season they'll be up
they're feasting their hearts out we're pulling into Seward right now coming to
the end of an amazing trip in just a second you'll see the mountain range
that borders the Seward on the landward side it's actually an extension of the
Kenai range the Train actually stops a short of downtown and will you'll see
people parked here to pick up passengers and to take them on their tours that
they that they may have booked so as we come to the end of an absolutely amazing
trip the views were breathtaking and the video doesn't do it justice it was a
trip that we truly truly loved I'd recommend it to anyone hope you enjoy
today's video for more information there is a link in the description below to
the Alaskan railroad if you've enjoyed the video please do me a favor hit the
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