It’s that time of year again.

The summer tourist season at Denali National Park has officially come to a close. On Thursday September 14th, I drove the 10:00am Toklat run. The day was surprisingly sunny and warm with lots of animals and a spectacular view of North America’s highest peak towering 18,000 feet above the surrounding tundra. Returning to the bus yard at 6:00pm, I post tripped the bus, turned in my paperwork and headed up to the Gold Spike Saloon for the first beer of the post season.

One of the best parts of my job in Denali National Park is the post-season. We work from early May until mid-September and during the winter many drivers head off to all manner of remote locations around the planet. Antarctica, southern Asia, South America and Africa are all popular destinations. This is particularly true of Antarctica where seasonal support service jobs at McMurdo Station attract a couple dozen drivers each year.

As some of you may have gleaned from my more recent trip reports I spend a fair bit of time during the off-season mixing mileage runs and pleasure travel. As a result, I long ago transcended Gold status in Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan and am now well on my way to Super Duper Diamond encrusted Kryptonite MVP level. I’ve got lots of miles to play with and I’m always ready to go.

My original postseason plans included First Class travel aboard Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong followed by First Class rail travel across Mongolia and Russia to Moscow aboard the Chinese train that operates along the Trans-Siberian Railway between Beijing and Moscow. From Moscow I’d planned to continue north by train to St. Petersburg and on to Helsinki, Finland. There I would catch a ferry over to Stockholm and head up to the far north of Norway before descending through Finland and across to Estonia before returning to Moscow and continuing on to Vladivostok aboard Russia’s Trans-Siberian train, the Rossiya. A two-day boat trip would get me from Vladivostok to Japan, thence onward to Hong Kong where I’d continue my journey in Cathay’s First Class cabin over to South Africa if Cathay had seen fit to return the First Class cabin to its HKG-JNB services. If not, I’d head for Adelaide and into Australia’s Red Centre.

Unfortunately, an ongoing medical condition has progressed to the point where I now walk with a limp pretty much all the time instead of just once in a while. Thankfully, it appears my condition can be addressed later this fall but to do so will mean putting a journey of this magnitude on the back burner. In the meantime, I have come up with a shorter though no less ambitious itinerary that includes visits to the Desert Southwest, Florida’s Everglades and Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton followed by rail journeys from Halifax to Montreal to New York. Next, I’ll fly a never before reported upon airline from Newark to Ft. Lauderdale before making a quick return to Alaska to do laundry. Then it’s back to the “Lower 48” for a rail excursion through Colorado’s Royal Gorge followed by First Class train travel down the California Coast and through Mexico’s Copper Canyon. Along the way, I’ll fly twenty-seven flights aboard eight different airlines, travel First Class aboard trains in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico and drive over two thousand miles in a variety of rental cars. Overnight accommodations will include everything from cheap motels to airport floors.

As such, the resulting trip report will be somewhat shorter though hopefully no less engaging. The hardest part will be trying to write about Economy Class air travel around North America. It’s so bland these days that I question if it’s even worth the effort. Still, it is part of the trip, so I’ll give those flights some mention though without the embellishment one would expect from a report on International First Class. Perhaps some solace can be found in reading my reports on USA 3000, Aviacsa and Azteca Airlines, three airlines very rarely if ever reported upon at FlyerTalk.

WARNING: Readers who enjoy super elite status in their frequent flyer programs or normally dwell in the rarified air of Starwood Suite upgrades may want to hit their back buttons about now. This will allow them to avoid insulting their sensibilities with tales of Economy Class travel and substandard accommodations. A wide variety more relevant and probably better written trip reports can be found in the trip report forum index. As for the rest of you diehards, go grab a beer or something similarly satisfying and settle in for the read.

Pictures from this trip can be found HERE