the family visits...

This week I'm lucky to have a week off from work - and lucky because my parents and brother are visiting from 'the outside' (or, the lower 48). We drove to Talkeetna on Sunday and then took the train north to Denali. After staying there for two nights, we made our way back south and are back in Anchorage now. I'm not going to write too much about what we did, but I'll post some pictures here:

Zach and I walk down main street in Talkeetna

after eating breakfast at "The Roadhouse"

Mom and Dad on board the Midnight Sun Express

Passing over Hurricane Gulch - unfortunately you can't

see the 296 ft. drop down to the Chulitna River

Inside Denali National Park on Monday

Celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary by hiking in the park -

we ended up getting rained on a bit, but it was still a lot of fun

Being Caribou for a day

That's where Denali is supposed to be, but it is covered by clouds, a pretty common occurrence

Outside "The Bake" in Denali

Southbound train rolling into Denali Depot

Mom and Dad watch "Animal" the brakeman hop off the train

and manually throw a switch so we can pull onto a siding

The weather cooperated on our way south and the mountain came out from behind the clouds - looks like Zach is getting a pretty good picture

chocolate cake beer and maple bacon ice cream

The past couple of weeks I've continued to work a lot, but I've also been able to enjoy a couple of really fun things off of the train. First... at the beginning of this month, I saw CAKE in concert at the Moose's Tooth Pub & Pizzeria.

John McCrea pumping up the crowd

The Moose's Tooth probably has the best pizza in all of Anchorage, some great local beer, and on the first Thursday of each month they host a concert to celebrate a monthly specialty beer. Fortunately I had wasn't working on the first Thursday of this month and I got to go see CAKE perform (they put on an awesome live show) and try out the Moose's Tooth new 'Chocalte Cake' beer (decent, but not as awesome as the show.)

after the CAKE show with friends

This past Sunday I also had the chance to hang out in Talkeetna for most of the day. Talkeetna is a little mountain town a couple hours north of Anchorage by car. It has a lot of summer activity because it is usually a staging area for people who are attempting to summit Denali. It's also the first stop for our train as we travel north to Fairbanks. So I've been through Talkeetna dozens of times this summer, but unfortunately the only time I'd stepped foot in the town had been back in June or July when I got off the train to unload trash from the train during a stop at the Talkeetna depot. So, when a few coworkers mentioned on Saturday that they would be traveling to Talkeetna on Sunday, I jumped at the chance to check out the town.

Our first stop was The Roadhouse, which is a really cool little hotel and restaurant. It's a quaint, humble little place (Adam Richman of Man vs. Food once came to the Roadhouse, but they only displayed this fact with one little poster towards the back of the restaurant) with really delicious food, including their famous sourdough hotcakes.

I had to try the Roadhouse Standard, which is a basic breakfast of potatoes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, but had a ton of flavor. It was also served with a thick slice of homemade wheat toast, and the apple butter on the red-and-white-checkered-tablecloth-covered table made me feel like I was right back in the Midwest.

We spent the rest of our Afternoon in Talkeetna by walking around town, checking out a little weekend open air art market, and waving at the train was it came through the depot.

Apparently we all don't spend enough time on the train and want to see it even on our day off. One other highlight of town was a little homemade ice cream stand. They had a John Deere engine powered ice cream churner sitting out front (again...I was really starting to think I was back in the Midwest) and had four different flavors of ice cream. When I stepped up to the window I was surprised to see that "Maple Bacon" was one of them, and I had to try it. It was actually a lot better that I expected, kind of a butter pecan sweetness with a finish of chewy, salty bits of bacon rather than pecans.

Unfortunately, we all had to get back to Anchorage that night because three of us were scheduled to go Northbound to Fairbanks on Monday. I got back to Anchorage last night, and now have two days off, so today I'm just relaxing and enjoy some much needed rest. For the next two weeks or so I'll just be in the work routine until my parents and brother visit on Aug. 21st, when I'll get to do some traveling and take a little longer break from the train. Oh, and to end this post, I thought I'd give you another taste of the view from my "office window" - I'll be sure to post more shots from the train in the coming week as fall rolls in and the colors start to change.

only six weeks left!?

Once again it's been far too long since I've posted something from up here in AK...so here's a quick update. Unfortunately, I don't have any new pictures this time, but I do have various pieces of news.

Recently I had a first - celebrating my birthday on a train! I turned 24 on July 26, and I celebrated, not surprisingly, by working. I was headed northbound to Fairbanks on the 26th, and it was great to be around people from work and get lots of well wishes from them.

I was surprised to also get to celebrate my birthday with my family in Kansas. The week before my birthday, I took a little six day break from Alaska to be with family and celebrate the life of my grandpa, Ivan Diller, who passed away on July 18. Fortunately, all of my cousins and aunts and uncles were able to make it to Hesston, KS; so being there was kind of like a mini family reunion. I was also really happy to be back in the midwest for a little bit: I had amazing food (fresh corn, tomatoes, homemade ice cream), saw the beautiful wide-open Kansas skies, and simply had a break from the hectic schedule I live up here. I definitely wasn't used to the hot weather back in the lower 48, however. I've been spoiled this summer, as the highs up here are usually only in the 70s and occasionally in the 80s.

Recently, the schedule of the train has been modified because of a recent aircraft crash near the Alaska Railroad tracks just north of Anchorage. The past weekend Elmendorf Air Force Base hosted an air show, and one week ago, on Wed. the 28th, a C-17 crashed while practicing for the air show. We heard that it had crashed close to the tracks, but weren't sure how it would affect our passenger rail service. Immediately after the crash, trains were not allowed to travel through the area surrounding the crash site, and passengers rode motorcoaches around the area. It wasn't until Monday that our passengers cars were allowed to travel through the area again, and I happened to be working on the first train that passed through the site. The military is still keeping strict security around the area, and our passengers were not allowed on the open-air platforms, or allowed to take pictures while passing by the crash site. When we did pass the wreckage, it was even worse than I imagined - the plane must have crashed right on the tracks, because there was debris and burned out trees on both sides of the track. The Boeing C-17 is also an extremely large aircraft, so there was a lot of wreckage, and it was very chilling to see one of the few recognizable pieces of the aircraft - the tail. Like I said, the military is keeping strict security on the site, so I don't have any pictures, but if you want to see the few pictures that the Air Force has released, you can see them here.

That's a pretty somber note to end this post on, so I'll leave you with this: My job involves lots of repetitive tasks, so there are several small tasks that I've found myself getting really good at. So, here are the top five skills that I've really improved since the beginning of the summer:

5. Laying bacon out on sheet trays - I was already pretty good at this because my experience at the Soda Shop, but our sheet trays on the train are smaller, so sometimes I'll lay out something like 15 sheet trays a day

4. Cutting melons - melon slices are served as a garnish for all of our breakfast plates, so that means lots of cantaloupe and honeydew slices every day

3. Getting cat-naps wherever I can find them - when working 15 hours days, one learns to grab a little sleep whenever there is time, even if it's just 15 minutes between breakfast and lunch

2. Using a knife on a moving train - thanks to a bit of care, I haven't had any serious cuts yet, knock on wood

1. Keeping my balance on a train moving 50+ mph - we always tell our guests to keep three points of contact while moving on the train - two feet on the ground and a hand on something else - however, when you're quickly walking through six cars and carrying a case of bacon (just as an example) it's pretty hard to find that third point of contact. So, I've learned to feel the movement of the train and compensate for the back-and-forth rocking and swaying. That's not to say that the 'train lurch' doesn't get me sometimes, especially in the kitchen - where the edges of the counters in our kitchens are oh-so-conveniently the same height as my hips, so whenever the train lurches as I'm quickly turning or moving in my kitchen, I simply fall into a counter edge...fortunately I'm not one to bruise very easily, otherwise my hips and legs might be all black and blue by the end of the summer.