We spend the night at the campground at the front of the park, then we take the train from Noon-8pm to Anchorage and camp overnight.
We got up to beautiful sunshine. Breaking camp and breakfast took only two hours today, and improvement by one hour over yesterday. Wendell made scrambled eggs and corned beef hash while I broke camp. We went to the shower house to shower and do laundry. The shower was a religious experience. I had a brainstorm while I was in the (4 dollar) shower. The dishes had to be washed in cold water so they were still greasy. I should have brought them into the shower with me. Next time. After our really smelly clothes were washed and our tent had dried from sitting in the sun we poked around the visitors center for a while. Then we got onto the train. The tour group passengers are crammed cheek-by-jowl in their private rail cars, which are very nice I'm sure. And the first class passengers are crammed cheek -by-jowl in their very nice rail car, but us `adventure class` passengers had the best rail cars. We had a cafe car, a dining car , two dome cars and 4 passenger cars. And only one passenger car was full. The rest were completely empty. You could have dome seating if you wanted or do like Wendell and I and go to one of the completely empty back cars which had seats bigger than first class airline seats, to stretch out and snooze. The seats recline back practically flat. Anchorage is a lot like Everett. Since we didn't want to camp in Everett we decided to youth hostel. We also wanted to get an early start and our camp breakdown rate was going 2 hours. As soon as Wendell mentioned `youth hostel` I whipped out my list of Anchorage hostels that I had prepped ahead of time having anticipated this suggestion by about 2 weeks. Wendell didn't have to `suggest` more than once. We got a private room in the Anchorage International Youth Hostel downtown. It's a bit grotty, but all youth hostels are. As an example there is a fitted sheet and a bedspread , but no flat sheet. We are going to use our sleep sacks. The bathroom is right outside our room which could be good or bad. It could be worse. We have a lamp in here with a light bulb that actually works, a real luxury item for a youth hostel. In a surprise move I whipped the bedspread ff the bed to check for bedbugs and found no bedbugs but did find the flat sheet folded up under the bedspread at the foot of the bed. ???? Sign outside the bathroom shower: `Dry off body in shower. Dry off one foot. Put it outside the shower. Dry off the other foot. Put it outside the shower. `
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