Phase 4 – Alaskan 2015 Adventure: Alaska Railroad GoldStar Service to Fairbanks

Ahhh.. nothing like a week of indulgent cruising to reset the senses. Gorgeous unending views, wildlife spotting, calving glaciers and amazing experiences shared together all while someone else handles the cooking, cleaning and driving.

We pulled into Whittier not quite ready to disembark the Coral Princess, but knowing full well we still had weeks ahead of us adventures in Alaska to explore.

Next up was the interior Alaska portion of our trip, involving even more train travel and lots of meet-ups planned!

Anchorage Hostel Stop Over

After our cruise, we did a little shore excursion cruising around Portage Lake, and then a motorcoach delivered us to Anchorage.

After a little confusion over where our backpacks ended up (apparently, cruise lines aren’t used to people adventuring on with independent travel after this cruise – most either connect to flights, return by cruise or arranged land adventures) – our driver very sweetly dropped us off at our hostel – The Alaska Backpackers Inn.

We knew we didn’t want to spend too much time in Anchorage itself on this adventure, as the saying goes:

‘Alaska is 30 minutes away from Anchorage‘.

It’s a typical big city, and useful for stocking up – but if you want to see Alaska, you have to get outta town.

Overnighting in Anchorage isn’t cheap either, most hotel and AirBnB options would have been $150-200+/night – and sorry, for just catching a few snoozes, we’re not paying that much. Especially considering we had an early morning train to catch.

I found this hostel online and booked a private double bed room for just $80, and it was a convenient 1/2 mile from the train station. An easy stroll in the morning with backpacks for our departure.

It had been decades since I had stayed in a hostel (back in my student days of wandering around the former Soviet Union one summer). And Chris hadn’t been in one since his Costa Rican adventure right before we met.

So what the heck.. a new experience to toss into this mismatched travel experience!

After the indulgence of a cruise ship – having a super spartan room with a barely comfortable bed, paper thin pillows, shared bathrooms and rental towels was a bit of a juxtaposition in experiences.

But, for our purposes, it was worth the cost savings… for a night. But we won’t be quick to book again.

We might be getting a touch too old/spoiled for this level of budget travel?

Anchorage to Fairbanks – GoldStar service aboard the Denali Star

For our transportation up to Fairbanks, we selected the Alaska Railroad’s Denali Star. They offer two classes of service – GoldStar and Adventurer.

With GoldStar, you get seated in their special double decker car with scenic dome windows, bar and open vestibule upstairs. Downstairs is a dining room with meals all day long included (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Oh, and you get two ‘adult’ beverages each included.

The Adventurer Class gets a single level car, and access to one smaller shared dome room for viewing. No other perks are included.

We decided for a 12 hour trip up to Fairbanks, we’d splurge and be tourists with GoldStar service so we could see the Alaskan country side.

And it was WELL worth it.

We had an extremely enjoyable adventure into Fairbanks with amazing views the entire way including narration. The food was very good onboard, with suitable meal options for my picky restrictions of gluten free and ‘mostly’ vegetarian.

We highly recommend incorporating this form of travel into an Alaskan adventure.. at least once anyway. We took the train back down to Anchorage in Adventurer class, and will update on what that was like in a future post.

We were about an hour late arriving to Fairbanks due to the heat wave – the train was on speed restriction to keep the rails from deforming. (That can happen?!?)

It was a blazing 85+ degrees, very hot for the area. Unlike Amtrak, who thinks nothing of being hours late with little apology. Alaska Railroads handled it with apologies, calling ahead to hotels, arranging alternate transportation and giving another free drink to everyone!

Yeah, that’s customer service we’ll always remember! (And it wasn’t even their fault!)

Our only complaint was the lack of power ports for keeping electronics charged up. Yeah yeah, we know.. we should be enjoying the views. But we were seriously lacking online time too.

Cost for GoldStar Service from Anchorage to Fairbanks: $401 per person during peak season. (Versus $233 for Adventurer class).

Fairbanks, AK: New Friends and RVer Meetup

Our reasons for selecting Fairbanks at this point in our journey was threefold.

• First, several of our RVing friends who had done this Alaska thing the old fashioned way (driving up) were aiming to be there for the summer solstice Midnight Sun Baseball game – so it would be a good known spot to converge with them.
• Second, I have a long time blogging friend (from way back before we started Technomadia.com) who had moved to Fairbanks – and had immediately extended an invitation for guest space & use of her spare vehicle.
• Third, I had two clients from back in my software development days who were located in Fairbanks – so it would be cool to at least see the area.

We planned four nights in the area, which would hopefully give us enough time to catch up on some much needed online time, explore the area, get to know our host in person and meetup with all our friends.

I should know this by now – there is NEVER enough time to do it all. But we sure did try!

Our hosts Katie & Larry picked us up and gave us a quick tour of the area before delivering us to their home in North Pole.

Here’s a run down of some of the adventures we had while in Fairbanks:

RV Blogger Meet-Ups

Midnight Sun Run

Last minute we hopped in on the Midnight Sun 10K ‘race’ through Fairbanks, ending at Pioneer Park (where the RV crew was parked).

As the title might imply, the race started at 1opm, and we crossed the finish line right after midnight (remember, it’s solstice.. and the sun sets for just an hour or so!). It was super fun, as many folks are in costume (ours courtesy of Katie) and it weaves through many neighborhoods where folks are giving out snacks, drinks and treats.

As our host Katie had to work a lot during our time in the area (she’s an ER nurse), it was a great opportunity to get to know her in person better.

Airboating

Katie’s sweetie Larry offered to take us out on his super cool 700hp airboat down the Chena River. It was beautiful, amazingly peaceful and a great way to see the area from water.

He then turned down a little side branch. Cool. Some ducks moved out of our way.

Then he said over the headsets:

‘HOLD ON… IT’S GONNA GET BUMPY!!!’

Bumpy?!?  What?? On this water?

Then I looked to where he had the boat aimed. Is that even possible??

We were aimed up a STEEP all dirt embankment. He guns it and launches us upwards, bouncing the entire way over branches, skillfully avoiding colliding into trees… up to some marshy grasslands back to a little water channel.

Woah.

Super super fun, and an experience I would have never expected in Fairbanks!

Afterwards, Larry & Katie dropped us off (with airboat in tow) back with our RVing friends – some folks arrive by limo, but not us. 🙂

It was fantastic getting to know Katie and Larry during our short time in Fairbanks, and we’re super grateful for their hospitality.

Midnight Sun Base Ball

The Midnight Sun Baseball Game was Sunday evening, our last night in town.

Tales of the Mutiny arrived just in time, and 12 of us wandered over from Pioneer Park to the stadium. I don’t follow baseball enough to report on anything of interest, but I think the Fairbanks team won? (Baseball is the one with field goals, right?).

 

But it was a ton of fun to hang out with the gang in the midnight sun, and experience this 110 year old tradition.

We overnighted with our friends Kristin & Jason in their Trek motorhome’s spare bed – and then Kristin so bravely got up a few hours later to drop us off at the train station as we headed to our next stop… Denali!

All of the RVers noted in this section will be exploring Alaska for another month or two, so be sure to be following the adventures for more stories from the road!

Follow our Summer 2015 Alaskan Adventure:

• Planning Our Great Alaskan Adventure
• Phase 1 — Alaskan 2015 Adventure: Amtrak Train Travel from St. Louis to Vancouver, BC
• Phase 2 — Alaskan 2015 Adventure: Touring Vancouver, BC
• Phase 3 — Alaskan 2015 Adventure: Northbound Cruise to Alaska

 

What’s Up Next? We took the train back to Anchorage with an amazing stop in Denali first, and our rental RV was waiting for us at the depot. We’ve spent the past week exploring the Kenai Peninsula, and will have stories to share from those experiences. We’ll return the rental to Anchorage later today, and then head out to Seward where we’ll catch our cruise ship south back to Vancouver on Sunday.

(And whew.. it’s tough to keep these trip updates up while living this adventure.. our apologies for being so far behind. We are covering it in more real time on both Instagram and Facebook.)

We’ve also booked our return trip back to St. Louis. We’ll spend a week exploring around Vancouver (July 12-19) and staying with some friends, and then head to Seattle for a few days. We fly out of Seattle on July 23 and will return to lots of cuddles from Kiki! All and all, we will have spent 7-week living out of backpacks since we left St. Louis by train in early June.

Bus Update: Wow, Master Tech RV has been rocking it this week!

Lots of work has been done on getting our new PrecisionTemp Twin Temp Jr. installed – which will provide hydronic heating for our interior, bays, water and engine pre-heating.

And they have gotten the exterior of the bus ready to be painted.

Just take a look at these pics… it’s so eery, ghostly and awesome to see our girl all stripped down! (And wow, I sure hope I look this good naked when I reach age 53! *grin* ).