Fairbanks

Alaska 2016/Day 1: June 19, 2016 (Getting to Fairbanks) and Day 2 (morning, the trip to Denali)

Having decided that we were going to go to Denali we next decided that our best approach was to fly into Fairbanks (rather than Anchorage) and work our way south via Alaska Railroad. Cruiseline-sponsored landtours often visit Fairbanks and all of them appear to follow the same basic itinerary. They go to Gold Dredge 8 and take a steamboat tour. Those held absolutely no interest for us. Looking at TripAdvisor for other ideas ultimately led to the conclusion that, at least on this trip, Fairbanks was going to be nothing more than an airport and overnight stay for us.

So, where to stay? Ideally we'd find some place reasonably priced with decent airport and/or Alaska RR shuttle service, as well as a restaurant or two within walking distance where we could get dinner. Our 8 hours of Delta flights from San Jose via Seattle would put us into Fairbanks around 2PM. That would give us some time to get to wherever we planned to stay and decompress a bit before dinner - but we didn't plan to fit in any organized activity on our travel day. Again, TripAdvisor to the rescue and we settled on Best Western Plus Chena River Lodge. At the time, this was the #2 property rated on TA (out of 24). They offered an airport shuttle (we called them on arrival and they sent a couple of taxis to get us within just a few minutes), included breakfast, and were within walking distance of both a run-of-the-mill restaurant (Brewster's) and a nicer restaurant (Chena's Alaskan Grill).

For our flights we all suffered with Delta. Overall we were really frustrated with them. We suffered MULTIPLE rebookings (prompted by them, not us) in the weeks prior to the flight. Overall, our group of eleven had four different outbound flights from 3 different states, and three of them experienced delays of 2+ hours on day of flight, and two of those placed connecting flights at serious risk of being missed. Those of us coming up from San Jose ended up having to hustle through SeaTac airport to make our Fairbanks flight rather than enjoy a leisurely lunch as planned due to the lateness of our departure from San Jose. Major hassles all around. Next time: Alaska Air. They were more expensive, but the hassle of Delta just wasn't worth it!

The Fairbanks airport is small and simple: I'm not sure there was more than one baggage carousel. I did notice bus drivers from Royal Caribbean, HAL, and Princess all waiting with appropriate signs upon landing. We. of course, were doing our own thing so retrieved our bags and were at the hotel within about 20-25 minutes of landing.

As it was the night of Game 7 of the NBA Finals and our Golden State Warriors were trying (unsuccessfully, it would turn out) to repeat as champs we decided we'd walk to Brewster's for dinner as we knew they'd have the game on TV. Brewster's was a bit warm, but otherwise pleasant. For those interested, we passed a large Fred Mayer store (this is like a Walmart) on the way - this is a place you could pick up pretty much any missing item. On the way back my family indulged my interest in geocaching. There was a simple cache hidden just behind the hotel that we grabbed post-dinner.

The most striking aspect of Fairbanks was that this was our first exposure to the long hours of summer daylight this far north. On that particular day Fairbanks had 20:54 between sunrise and "sunset". I put the latter in quotation marks because it was never really dark at all that day.

The following morning we had a quick breakfast at the hotel. We've stayed at Best Western Plus hotels before and the breakfast selection here was pretty typical: hot/cold cereal, scrambled eggs and sausage, make-your-own-waffle and toast, and some fruit. Overnight, a busload of tourists had appeared so the 5-6 tables were in use and the room was REALLY crowded.

We hopped into two more cabs to get to the train station. We had the front desk make arrangements the prior night and had been told that the hotel did not cover the costs to the train station (only to/from the airport). On the morning of transport, however, the cab drivers came to the front desk and got vouchers from the hotel staff, so we got free rides in the end. Time to the train station was 10-12 minutes. On the recommendation of the hotel, we arrived about 20 minutes before departure time which turned out to be just about perfect. Gave us time to check our baggage, and run through the model train layout at the station before boarding.

I had booked regular train cars for this one (Adventure Class) and we were initially assigned to Car C. The train layout was A and B=Goldstar, C, D, E=Adventure (with D including the shared dome), and F=the private Wilderness Explorer car. Car F was off-limits to those in A-E. The Fairbanks-Denali leg apparently isn't as popular as legs south of Denali, so D and E were empty...which turned out to be a blessing. Here's something I never saw anyone on Cruise Critic mention: Cars D&E are older than A-C, having been built in the 50's...when rail travel was more luxurious. The seats in D&E are WAAAAAAY more comfortable, have more leg room, have foot rests...and also have better window views. Having been encouraged by the conductors to explore and freely change seats, we made this surprising discovery and moved our group of 8 into the front of car D...where we enjoyed a private section of 16 seats to ourselves for the entire journey! One of the conductors congratulated us - he mentioned that he loved it when folks made use of these seats when otherwise unoccupied.

A, E, M, C in our original seats in Adventure Class Car C. Note how close together the rows are, and see how the bottom of the window pane is level with A's eyes.

A, R, D, C, M in Adventure Class Car D. The seats are much nicer leather cushion bases, and there's a ton of legroom. You can't see the multi-position footrests, but they're there. You can recline about 75 degrees and still not get in the way of the seat behind you. Also note how A's eyes are well above the bottom of the window pane, even when he has reclined back a bit.

For anyone considering GoldStar seating for Fairbank to Denali, my recommendation is to not bother. This section of the railway was mostly permafrost forest, which isn't very scenic. (BTW: if you, like us, plan to take 2+ Alaska RR trips, here's a game you can play: count how many times one of the on-board guides explain what permafrost is. Do NOT turn this into a drinking game - your liver won't appreciate it. <g>) The side of the train you sit on doesn't appear to matter. This seems to be true of the entire Denali Star route (Fairbanks to Anchorage) as well as the Coastal Classic route (Anchorage to Seward).