Alaska (not cruise)
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Anonymous
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If you’re looking for something really incredible and are up for an adventure check out Curious Nature Guided Adventures out of Homer. They do guided backcountry camping trips with the bears out in Katmai far from the crowds at Brooks Falls. The setting annd bears anre amazing and they take care of everything - food, gear, top notch safety, real respect for the bears and environment in general. My teenage son and I went last summer and it totally was a once in a lifetime experience and I can’t say more positive things about Curious Nature and their collaborators Basset Bear Viewing.
Homer and Seward were both really neat and gorgeous scenery all around. I’ve been lots of beautiful places but Alaska is way up there. I don’t know that I’d stay in Anchorage but the native Alaskan museum there was great. |
Anonymous
I can’t emphasize this enough - be careful with the flight seeing operators! We went in 2018 (no cruise, did a two week road trip). I had a Denali NP glacier landing flight booked out of Talkeetna. We were very disappointed when the tour operator cancelled our flight, as well as all flights that day due to fog. The next day, the same tour company had a fatal crash - same itinerary we had. This still haunts me to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2_Aviation_de_Havilland_Beaver_(DHC-2)_crash |
Anonymous
That Wikipedia link didn’t post right. Here’s another https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/aviation/2019/10/31/weve-run-into-the-side-of-a-mountain-report-lists-final-messages-from-2018-denali-crash-that-killed-five/ |
Anonymous
| We spent a week in Homer two years ago (I posted here when we had a tsunami warning our first night there) and I’d go there again in a heartbeat. |
Anonymous
+1. I’m from the “Lower 48” (a term you will hear, along with “Outside”) but have traveled all over Alaska for both work and pleasure and can confirm that the people do not hate non-Alaskans. A huge percentage of the people you’ll meet are from Texas or Louisiana (mostly went up to work in the oil business). |
Anonymous
I know many Alaskans and K2 Aviation is the most well-regarded operator in Talkeetna/Denali (or at least it was — it’s been a few years since I’ve asked). The lesson here is that flying in a small plane is dangerous, and even more so in Alaska. Everyone in Alaska knows someone (or multiple someone’s) who has died in a plane crash, often with a well-regarded pilot at the helm. On the other hand, I’d rather fly in Alaska with a well-regarded pilot than the vast majority of “flight-seeing” operations that operate in places like the Grand Canyon or Hawaii. |
Anonymous
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We did a week inland prior to our cruise. We arrived in Anchorage, had breakfast, and drove to Seward for a couple of nights (do a boat cruise, see some whales, and hike and see the salmon swimming upstream). Next, Talkeetna for a couple of nights, river rafting and ATV to a homestead, next up, Denali. We did the bus deep in and spent the day hiking with a naturalist. Spent the night. On the way back to Anchorage, stopped at a Musk ox farm and learned about qiviut (more expensive and will keep you warmer than cashmere).
You don't need a tour, you can do this on your own with a rented car |
Anonymous
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The bus tour in Denali should be considered carefully. And IMO was not worth it especially if you only have 6 days.
We took the day-long tour (I think it was about 8 hours long) and it was uncomfortable and boring. The bus was an old school bus with small bench seats that could barely fit two average size adults. The box lunch we got was inedible. We didn't see any wildlife nearby at all. None. The bus had video/tv screens in the front and the driver had a long-distance camera connected to it. When he saw something (like sheep) way up on a hill he pointed camera at it and we watched it on the screen as it was nothing but a speck the size of rice if you looked at it yourself. We soon realized ... we were essentially watching grainy videos of animals on a screen - something we could have done anywhere. We completely understood that you can't command animals to appear in natural settings, but this bus tour seemed like a loooong waste of time to us. When we finished the disappointing tour, there were several moose wandering around the parking lot right at the visitors center! Also saw moose/bear when just driving around on our own. Didn't see a single one of either during Denali bus drive. |
Anonymous
| Do you see more natural beauty from the cruise ship/water or on land? |
Anonymous
The best combo is a one-way Alaska tour combined with traveling by land for a week before/after. If you had to choose one though, I'd choose land tour in a heartbeat. |
Anonymous
I'm the PP from Anchorage and this is unnervingly true. I also know multiple people who were eaten by bears. That being said, many planes go up and down just fine without issue. It's just not my preferred way to see the state; I'd rather walk. Especially with just 6 days, you can see a lot of cool things without going into the sky. Even just driving from Anchorage to Homer or Seward is absolutely gorgeous. And, responding to the person about Denali -- I agree. It can be a mixed bag. I feel bad for the tourists who head up that way and can't even see the mountain. But, when you do get good weather, it's pretty astonishing. I wouldn't bother with the tour, I'd just go to Talkeetna and spend a night there if the weather was good. |
Anonymous
We saw the "big 5" inland: caribou, wolves, dall sheep, moose and bears (bears hiking and in Denali, wolves in Denali). I disagree about skipping Denali with only a week. If you take the long, old bus ride, and hike with a naturalist, totally worth it (and we had kids, 12 and 14 with us and they agree). If your going all the way to Alaska from the DMV, and can take 2 weeks, one for the cruise and one inland, do it. I don't think I'd go for just one week, and wished we'd had more than 2 weeks |
Anonymous
I shared this sentiment when I was young, but after 25 years of being flown in small aircraft in Alaska, I take a different perspective. The main thing to remember is that every single aviation accident is somebody's fault. Choosing to fly into bad weather is someone's fault, choosing to fly too low (and therefore not being able to recover from a mechanical issue) is someone's fault, mechanical problems are someone's fault, etc., etc. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, flying is dangerous". Some air taxi and flightseeing companies have accident and fatality rates that are one or even two(!) orders of magnitude worse than the best--yet they are still in operation! It doesn't have to be like this, and a few operators understand this. |
Anonymous
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6 days is tight. You can do a lot and you’ll leave a lot for next trip.
When we visited we did Denali NP, anchorage and Seward. In Denali we hiked. Recommend the hiker bus vs the tour bus. In Seward we did the 7hr fjord tour which we really enjoyed. Also took quick trip to Whittier which was quite memorable. Alaska has a “Mile Post” magazine/guide that highlights stops along the highway. You can get it on Amazon. It was helpful. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. We spent about 16 days (including DIY land trip from Anchorage/Denali/Fairbanks/Talkeetna) and only covered a small part of Alaska. If you rent a car, be sure the rental company records any damage before you leave with the car so you don't get blamed. Fill up gas completely when you have the opportunity; same for snacks and restroom stops, especially north of Denali where things start to get sparse. Some things that happened in Alaska that affected our trip: a mud slide, a landslide, high winds, all changed our trip plan. |