Alaska - Summer 2007 (2200 miles in the Last Frontier)

[Mark Sedenquist]

As an Alaska resident, and with all due resepct to AZbuck, a guided tour of Ak in not the best use of $$$$ and will not be the best experience

I think it depends on the energy level of the traveler at the time of the trip. AZBuck is an accomplished roadtripper with a proven penchant for off-the-beaten-path exploring, but a state like Alaska can be daunting for even the most adventuresome of travelers. I have utilized both forms of travel in AK and I prefer my own wanderings -- when I can. Thanks for stopping in and sharing your expertise and ideas!

I have a couple of other planning tips:

Bring a good telephoto lens -- I have friends who have captured some amazing photos of grizzlies, caribou and other large animals right from the Alaskan Highway (without getting out their trucks...)

There are some game refuges that enable up and close and personal viewing of some of the magnificent animals that call Alaska "home".
Yukon Wildlife Preserve (near Whitehorse, YT)
The Large Animal Research Station in Fairbanks
The Musk Ox Farm near Palmer
The Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center
Denali National Park....Hard to forget this place!

The weather is very changeable -- bring lots of combinations of clothes to enable layering.

#1 Best Advice: Alaska is not like a theme park -- it is very much an evolving place for visitors -- ferry schedules can and do change often, weather can be darn right amazing and can affect roads at any time. Alaska summers nearly always mean HUGE wildfires and so smoky conditions and some road closures are the norm. And there is always road construction underway....

Mark

[cool]

Thanks Greg. Nice to get tips from a native.

Talkeetna is a great little town but often very crowded in the summer. Don't go on a weekend of holiday if possible. There isn't all that much to do there all though it is a fun visit.

So far, we've decided around a 10 day trip around July 2nd or 3rd until 14th or 15th. Think it is ok?

Denali and the Kenai peninsula. are both great. Seward is the best place to visit the Kenai Fjords if you only have a few days. They have glacier cruises, hiking, a Sealife Center and nice town. Homer is good but it is a bit farther and not quite as scenic IMHO.

I've read quite a bit about Seward & Homer. Since we will miss out on the Inside Passage, a cruise to Prince William Sound or Kenai Fjords is a sure thing. Which is better? I've come across some scenic drives from Anchorage too! The Coastal highway to Seward/Homer, Portage Valley, Whittier, etc. But don't know if it is all worth it.

If you want to visit some slightly out of the way places, try a drive on the Denali highway. that is not the road that goes into Denali NP, but a dirt road that starts about an hour south. It is stunning and there are few people.

Being out of the crowd...hmmm. Is that a good thing in Alaska? I've being trying hard to find an inexpensive accommodation near Denali in vain. Do you know of anything that is not listed online? Do companies allow rental cars on dirt roads? Again, how common are bears on the roads?

You can spend a couple days on the road, as there is a lodge in the middle or just make it a day trip and only do part of it. Also a great place is Wrangell-St. Elias NP. It is a bit out of the way from the Denali-Anch.-Kenai axis but is another fantastic place.

Paranoid that AK is full of bears & assuming we won't be doing a lot of hiking, what all can I see in Wrangell. Is there a road in there? Google maps did not show any. Did I miss something?

Be careful of the small towns, they are often touristy. however people are friendly. Unless you want to stay in hostels, cheap can be hard to find. We are like any other place in the US during tourist season.

Yeah! I am realizing that! How about the gas prices? Rental car itself comes up to a good $1000!!!

Early fall(September) is a great time. It is starting to get cool, prices drop and the crowds are gone. However some places will start to close up. Check the places you want to see carefully. I have seen the Aurora in Sept. but that is not common.

Be cautious of bears but don't worry about them. The precautions are simple and bear attacks are rare.

Thanks for the encouragement, but I think I am still scared!!!
Do you have any Polar bears around there? Just wondering!


cool

[cool]

There is no way we can touch Canada. We do not have a visa & are not US citizens.

Mark,
those links are helpful. Thanks!
Photography is one of the main reasons for our visit. We have a basic DSLR with all the lenses. Hope to bring back lots of pics :)
I did not know about the wildfires in Summer.
Also, do you think it might be better to push it to August?

cool

[Mark Sedenquist]

There is no way we can touch Canada. We do not have a visa & are not US citizens.

Well, that will certainly leave out the Yukon then!

Hope to bring back lots of pics :)

It is hard to take a "bad" photo in Alaska...

I did not know about the wildfires in Summer.

Here is one of the sites I watch to check on smoky conditions in the USA. 95% of the fires in Alaska are the result of lightning strikes and hundreds of thousands of acres burn each year.

Also, do you think it might be better to push it to August?

For which reasons? There will be fires in Alaska until the snow starts falling in the Fall -- June, July, August and September are all gorgeous months in Alaska.

Mark

[greg in ak]

10 days is good length although , as i'm sure you know, Ak is so big it is hard to cover. I would avoid Seward over the july 4 weekend. It is more crowded then normal because there is a huge, crazy race up and down a mountain and many Alaskans go there. It is to crowded over july 4 to be enjoyable.

Fires are a concern but hard to predict. We may have many or not. You can't base a trip on fire. The weather is the same. We have, to say the least, highly unpredictable weather. It could be in the 90' or 70's in Denali; all sunny or mostly rainy. Up towards Denali fire is not much of concern since there are few trees. August tends to have a bit more rain then July.

It is hard to have bad cruise in the Prince William Sound or Kenai F. The first hour of the drive south of Anch. is simply as beautiful as any in the world. Portage Valley a minute off the highwayis definitely worth the stop on the way south. Whittier is interesting. The town site was chosen by the military during WW2. They wanted a place that was as safe as possible from air attack. So they choose Whittier since the weather is almost uniformly bad. There are nice cruises out of Whittier but not much else. Homer is farther then Seward from Anch. and doesn't offer anything that Seward doesn't. Seward is the best choice with a stop at Portage.

It will be hard to find anything cheap near Denali nor do i know anything that is not on the web. Off the beaten track in Ak. Is generally good. I'm assuming you won't really be anyplace to wild by Ak. standards, so the chance of really being alone and in danger is low. It is good to experience Ak without to many others around.

There is a road in Wrangell, look at the national park service website. However if you are only here for 10 days or so, you probably wont' have time to get over there although the drive is great but long. It also takes a bit of effort to see the park.

Well gas in in the 2.70's now and may go higher. Cheaper then some other places but not great, even though we bring it up out the ground and refine it here. There wont' be a polar bear within hundreds of miles. Not a concern. Denali is a great place to see brown bears. Last time i took the park bus we saw four mother with cubs. Last time i backpacked in Denali, i didn't even see a lock of bear hair. Bear attacks are very rare. Sitings of bears are random.

[AZBuck]

With all due respect to AZbuck, a guided tour of AK in not the best use of $$$$ and will not be the best experience (IMHO).

Greg, I couldn't agree more with you, so perhaps I did not make myself clear. What RMA offers is NOT a guided tour. What they do is make all the arrangements for you: set up the rental car, book the B&Bs make reservations for rafting trips, airplane rides (did I mention that I got to sit right seat on a flight that landed on a glacier on Mount McKinley?), set up the whale watching, etc., etc., etc. But you are not on a tour. We travelled completely on our own. In fact one of the nicest parts of it was that we would be somewhere, having an attraction all to ourselves when a tour bus would pull up, disgorge its contents, and we could just move on. But to have someone who knows Alaska make the arrangements was a tremendous help.

I really don't give testimonials too often, but RMA made our experience in Alaska what it was. Two examples:

1) We flew in to Fairbanks and were met at the gate by a driver who took us to our first "B&B" which turned out to be a private cabin in the woods, on a hill, with a view of the Alaska Range to the south. Our rental car was waiting in the driveway.

2) After a few days in Fairbanks we drove to Denali. When we were done there, we took the train to Talkeetna. What did we do with the car? We left it at the train station. In Talkeetna, our B&B again turned out to be a separate home, again with a view of Denali, and the owner lent us her own car.

Could I have found such accommodations on my own? I seriously doubt it.

AZBuck

[greg in ak]

Azbuck- No i think you were clear enough after going back and re-reading your post. I was skimming to fast. Interesting service, I can see a use for them. One of the best parts about being on your own and with your own car is the freedom to explore late into the day. the days are so long that it is a shame how many tour bound people waste part of the 19 hour days at there hotel.

[cool]

airplane rides (did I mention that I got to sit right seat on a flight that landed on a glacier on Mount McKinley?),

That sounds interesting. Can you share your itinerary please, AZBuck?

But to have someone who knows Alaska make the arrangements was a tremendous help.

I certainly agree.

1) We flew in to Fairbanks and were met at the gate by a driver who took us to our first "B&B" which turned out to be a private cabin in the woods, on a hill, with a view of the Alaska Range to the south. Our rental car was waiting in the driveway.

Did you have a higher budget? or Do they do it for any price range?

2) After a few days in Fairbanks we drove to Denali. When we were done there, we took the train to Talkeetna. What did we do with the car? We left it at the train station. In Talkeetna, our B&B again turned out to be a separate home, again with a view of Denali, and the owner lent us her own car.
Could I have found such accommodations on my own? I seriously doubt it.

Fact: I am not finding anything like that on my own. Will sure consider the options. Thanks, AZBuck!

[Mark Sedenquist]

1) We flew in to Fairbanks and were met at the gate by a driver who took us to our first "B&B" which turned out to be a private cabin in the woods, on a hill, with a view of the Alaska Range to the south. Our rental car was waiting in the driveway.

That does sound like an amazing service! The only example I can think of that tops that was one time on a wildfire in central Arizona in the 1970's -- Our pilot landed on a remote, dirt landing strip at dawn, in the middle of the forest and we found a jeep (with keys in the ignition) waiting for us. Nobody else around (and, of course, no map or instructions about where were supposed to go) but still, it made us feel important and/or special for about five minutes or so....

Mark

[AZBuck]

Can you share your itinerary please, AZBuck?

I went and dug up my itinerary provided by Rainbow Mountain Adventures (RMA). It was a loose-leaf binder with close to 200 pages of background, history, descriptions and detail. There is simply no way that I can duplicate it for you here. One small error which may help. I misremembered the tour name - we were on the "Legends of the North" itinerary, which is somewhat less expensive than the one I named previously.

The service provided by RMA is unique and constantly evolving. Even while we were travelling through Alaska, they changed the provider of our trip up the Susitna River, because the previous boat had not kept up the standards demanded by RMA. I also seem to remember that some of our accommodations were not 'commercial' in the normal sense. By that I mean that they were not B&Bs or rentals that you would find on the web, but rather were the homes or cabins of owners who had a working arrangement with RMA and would only rent out at certain times. A case in point was our 'home' in Talkeetna. This was actually the home of a young woman who worked through the summer as a guide for expeditions up Mt. McKinley. When she was on the mountain, her home was available, but only through RMA.

Don't get me wrong, some of the attractions included in the RMA packages are standard tourist fare, such as the paddle-wheel boat out of Fairbanks, but some are quite intimate scale endeavors such as the whale and glacier boat ride into Resurrection Bay out of Seward, which was on a boat that held a dozen passengers tops and where the captain served those of us on this trip hot chocolate in the wheelhouse. The point is that I cannot duplicate for you what RMA did for us. My information is out of date at best, and useless at worst. As you have discovered, travel in Alaska is a bit pricey. If you find that you cannot arrange your own adventure for significantly less than one of RMA's "tours" (Remember: 1-these are NOT tours! and 2-prices are all-inclusive (accommodations, transport, meals, admissions), then I highly recommend that you put yourselves in RMA's capable hands.

AZBuck