My teen almost refused to go on the trip because we were going to subject him to 15 hour bus ride in Denali (an exaggeration on his part) and he would be SOOOO bored. But it ended up being one of his favorite parts of the trip (and was only maybe 4 hours due to the road further in being closed at the time). He's big into looking for animals, and was glued to the scenery. He also enjoyed rafting outside of Denali, exploring the mining town at Hatcher Pass ("this is something straight out of Scooby Doo!), the Kenai Fjord boat trip, and just getting to fish at a pond in Homer. Probably the highlight was the plane ride around Denali where we landed on a glacier - he got to ride up front with the pilot. So much fun.

Overall, we had a good mix of shorter hikes, scenic drives, cultural stops/museums, and animal focused activities. And a lot of breweries, which he enjoyed because many also brewed their own sodas that he could sample.

Kenai fjords cruise out of Seward, raft cooper river then halibut fishing in Homer.
Stop at any coffee wagon and order a mocha bean freeze.

I really liked sea kayaking in Seward but my kids hated it (too uncomfortable and too much work). We just did the half day trip. https://www.kayakak.com/

Hi- going to Denali, Seward + Homer. Not opposed to spending $ on activities but crowd sourcing the “best” ones.

Where in AK will you be? It’s a big place and recommendations will be different based on where you’ll be.

Anonymous wrote:Any suggestions out of Juno?

*Juneau. Stupid autocorrect.

Any suggestions out of Juno?

The helicopter trip to race dogs on a glacier is possibly the best thing I’ve ever done in my life and really memorable. It’s expensive but I’d say it’s worth it particularly if you love dogs and cool scenery. On safety, I think th Alaskan copter pilots are pretty experienced and they are tightly regulated about flight conditions (meaning those trips can cancelled all the time). Pilots have told me that even if they think it’s perfectly safe and thy would fly themselves they aren’t allowed to fly tourists if wind or cloud cover is higher than some limit. In contrast, I would not do another float plane. Those planes are mostly old and not well designed and there have been a number of accidents. I reach the faa report on one of them, because I’m pretty sure the pilot who flew us was killed in it, and it was pretty scary about how badly designed those planes are go this sort of thing. It used to be there was basically one operator but with the increase in tourism there are now several and it’s just not a great situation, IMHO. (Maybe someone will say they’ve corrected since those last accidents, but it makes me nervous.). I don’t know about the small bush pilot planes but those make me nervous too.

My kids really loved the dog kennels at Denali. That was one of their favorite things and it’s basically free (entry fee to the park). We also did some light hiking in Denali.

The native life center outside anchorage is awesome and really cool. Some people are upset by the price but it supports tons of cultural programming for native kids and teens, so I feel like it’s money well spent. They do performances there (story telling, dance etc) but also have these awesome rep productions of native traditional housing you can explore, including crawling through a polar bear escape tunnel, and they have native people there interpreting all the exhibits that you can chit chat with.

Agree that the drive from anchorage to Seward is really nice and a stop in girdwood is great.

What areas are you going to? Hikes are probably your best active cheap activity.