Alaska trips - for the person who asked

Alaska Trips – one Land only, one Cruise.

Land only trip – Mid August, 2000. Cruise trip - Sept, 2005.

Land trip details:

Day 1 – Arrived ANC in the evening, stayed at a B&B. Last minute booking due to the original B&B did not honor reservation. Rental car from Dollar. Gave in the “upgrade” talk to an Intermediate after wasting 20 minutes and couldn’t get the originally booked compact. B&B costed $120, Rental Car costed $30 a day before tax & fee.

Day 2 – Drove to Seward. Stopped at Exit Glacier before going into town. Walked the trails. Went to town, dropped off luggages at yet another last minute B&B, cost $100. (see above). Took the afternoon Kenai NP cruise, cost $120 per person. (lunch provided, about 7 hours). Cloudy weather with drizzle but we did come quite close to a glacier (forgot the name, it was not very tall, but very side) and saw calvings. Wildlife viewing along the way. Saw a few tails of Humpback, and saw upclose a pod of Orcas. They were very playful with us, rushing from one side to the other side of the boat. It was very very cold – we put on all the clothings we had plus rain gear in order to stay outside.

Day 3 – Drove up to Anchorage, then onto Girdwood (near Talkeetna). Stopped at Alyeska Resort on Seward Hwy. Took the tram car up and had lunch at the resort. (at the time there was a relative bargain package $15 per person included Tram car and a burger lunch). Continued on Seward Hwy and stopped at Portage Glacier Exhibition Center just right next the Tunnel to Whittier. Well worth the time spent there. The Glacier had retreated a lot so you couldn’t see it unless you took the sightseeing boat trip. However you could still see the floating small icebergs near the shore.
Stopped at Anchorage to grocery shopping to prepare for the trip to Denali NP.
Stayed at a B&B at Girdwood – not recommending this stop, unless you plan to take flight-seeing trip at Talkeetna to see Mt.Mckinley (Denali is native language). You could drive all the way to Denali / Healy area. The B&B was a few miles away from the main hwy and we had to drive thru some gravel roads to get there, cost $95. We almost got lost the next day when we tried to get back to main road. Heavy roadwork around the area.
HINT: when you book B&B, make sure to see if they advertise access via paved road, if they don’t say a word, ASK! Chances are, they are on gravel road access.

Day 4 – Drove up to Denali, stopped frequently. Toured the small town Talkeetna – not much there. We detoured to Talkeetna Lodge Resort and a resort by Princess Cruise nearby – all supposedly to be great sops to view Mt.Mckinley but weather was not co-operating at all and we see nothing but heavy cloud.
Stayed at Denali Dome Home at Healy. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – ask for the top floor King bed room – it is on the 3rd floor loft and you are all by yourselves, very spacious. Hosts are extremely gracious and have 2 Huge living rooms for guests to lounge around. We met a couple from Britain on their 3-week long Alaska trip and we talked for hours at the evening. Cost $110. Healy is a tiny town just north of Denali NP and you can find small restaurants, gas station etc.

Day 5 – Denali NP. We purchased the tickets online 2 months before our trip, but forgot to check the B&B breakfast time – as a result we did not have time to eat the Hot breakfast (egg, sausage, ham, bacon, the usual stuff) but only ate the cereals and bagels/pastries. We saw people lining up at the ticket desk trying to put down their names for space due to cancellation or no-show, and for next day’s tickets. You want to make sure you have the tickets for the day you go. The NP site has detailed information.
We only went to Eielson Visitor Center (currently closed for re-construction) at Mile 66. We did not go to Wonder Lake at Mile 83 as that would add another 3 hours to the 7 hours bus ride. Our B&B host confirmed that if for Wildlife viewing, Eielson Visitor Center is as far as he would go. Weather was drizzling all day long but that was excellent weather for viewing wildlife as they wouldn’t come out much if weather was sunshine all the way – it could be very very hot on a sunny day. We saw tons of Calibou, some Moose, Dall Sheep (at a distance high up on mountain ridge – the B&B host said they called them Dall Dots – that is how tiny you can see them!), and Grizzly bears. We were very lucky that our bus driver was very accommodating. Just outside Eielson Visitor Center, there were a mother bear with her 2 clubs looking for foods on the mountain slope. The Center immediately got everyone inside and wouldn’t let anyone wonder around. On our turnaround, the bus driver drove very slowly and made frequent stops to let us take pix and oohs and aahs on the family. When we were at Polychrome Overlook he stopped and told us to get off to see the FRESH footprints of Wolves. Wolves are very rare in Denali so even seeing their footprints were considered a treat.
Stayed at Dome Home for the night again. Cannot say enough about how great this B&B is.

Day 6 – drove back to Anchorage to catch our late evening flight to Seattle.
Non-eventful. After we arrived Anchorage, we went to the lake to watch Seaplanes taking off and landing on the water. Flew out around 11pm. Arrived Seattle then took a car and drove to Bellingham. Spent the night there and drove to Vancouver the next morning.

If this site let me post it, I will do the Cruise trip on another post. Should be much shorter.

所有跟帖： 

• Alaska Cruise -lvtotravel- ♀ (14538 bytes) () 07/16/2006 postreply 08:42:23

• 回复：Alaska Cruise - a few more things to ponder -Lvtotravel- ♀ (3979 bytes) () 07/16/2006 postreply 12:58:11

• 回复：Alaska Cruise -xlu316- ♂ (228 bytes) () 08/09/2006 postreply 16:14:45

• A few extra things to ponder -lvtotravel- ♀ (3979 bytes) () 07/16/2006 postreply 12:54:54

• A few extra things to ponder -Lvtotravel- ♀ (3979 bytes) () 07/16/2006 postreply 12:56:40

• 回复：A few extra things to ponder -大肚子蝈蝈- ♂ (66 bytes) () 07/16/2006 postreply 13:35:17

• 回复：Alaska trips - for the person who asked -xiaoqi5- ♀ (167 bytes) () 07/17/2006 postreply 06:47:55

• if you can only go once, do a combo of land and cruise -Lvtotravel- ♀ (376 bytes) () 07/17/2006 postreply 15:33:57

• very good info; copy down, thanks! -mengxu- ♀ (184 bytes) () 07/17/2006 postreply 09:18:32

• You would be very surprised about how busy one can get on a crui -lvtotravel- ♀ (1495 bytes) () 07/18/2006 postreply 10:13:17

• 回复：Alaska trips - for the person who asked -xiaoqi5- ♀ (257 bytes) () 07/18/2006 postreply 06:28:00