Alaska travel advice?

Hello. Looking to take a trip to Alaska with the wife this summer. We want to kayak, hike, see glaciers and eat well. We're not planning on doing a tour or cruise, just putting it together ourselves.

My first thought is to rent a house in Anchorage and use that as a home base, taking day trips from there. Does that make sense? Thanks.

 

You can do all those things well from Anchorage. If you want to see Denali, the Kenai Peninsula or any of the Inner Passage, I’d suggest finding a place to lay your head at those locations.

A flightseeing tour of Denali is a big-ticket item to consider, if that’s your kind of thing. It’s hard to get the massive scope of that place from the ground.

I can’t recommend a restaurant, but if you get a chance to buy some fish off the docks at Whittier, do it.

 

Also - cruises up the SE coast allow you to see a lot of Alaska, and they have plenty of excursion opportunities for hiking, kayaking and air tours.
Or check out the ferry system for a cheaper alternative to see Alaska from the water.

 

Before our cruise, we flew into Fairbanks and made our way to Denali. Probably the best day of the trip was an 8-hour bus tour into Denali National Park. Saw moose, bears, caribou, sheep, lots of birds. The driver instructs everyone to shout it out if they see anything and don't worry if it's a false alarm. Four hours up and four hours back, three stops along the way. A box lunch and snacks. Fascinating. The bussie had a camera with a zoom function, so if there was an animal or herd a distance away, he could zoom in on it and it was connected to closed-circuit TVs in the bus.
From Denali we had to take a train to Whittier where our cruise ship was docked. That was nine hours and it got really monotonous. I was prepared for a long ride, but after about seven hours, I was pretty fed up.

 

I would spend at least a few nights staying on the Kenai Peninsula, either Seward or Homer.

My wife and I spent three days and two nights at a great B & B in Seward, and wish we stayed longer. An all-day whale watching/glacier boat tour, hiking at Exit Glacier, and a kayaking trip in the (relatively) calm waters of Resurrection Bay were all great ways to see Alaska.

 

Do you remember the name of the B&B? We're likely in for a few nights in Seward as well. Thanks

 

I became fascinated by glaciers. At Glacier Bay, they told us the river of ice started on a mountaintop 75 miles away. The facade of the glacier was 6 miles wide. The ice that was breaking off and falling into the water was 400 years old.

 

I looked into it, and it's now called Resurrection Lodge (was known as Saltwater Lodge when we stayed there).

Located just south of town in the Lowell Point area.

Website: Home

 

My brother's wedding was in Anchorage during the summer solstice of 2003. Sad to say we weren't able to truly see what Alaska was all about, we did swing into Palmer and Seward. One of my favorite food stops was Moose Tooth, a pizza joint south of downtown Anchorage. Still remember it as some of the best pizza I've ever had.

 

And wash it down with some Montana beer ...

 

Thanks for this, and for everyone's feedback. Very helpful.

 

We did a week of fishing trips with the family a few years ago, based out of Soldotna, on the Kenai peninsula. It was awesome. I'm not a huge fisherman but it was truly a great experience. We fished for trout one day and salmon several other days on the Kenai river. Another day we took a floatplane to a lake inland a ways to fish for more salmon, and swept down right close to a glacier on the way.

The best day, though, was a deep-sea fishing trip out of Homer. We caught so damn many fish I stopped trying. We caught cod, rockfish and tons of halibut. After fighting to pull those halibut up from the bottom I would just be exhausted. Finally, we were one short of our limit for everyone on the boat and my brother and I just had our hooks 10 feet below the water. The last thing I wanted to do was reel in another damn fish!

It was so amazing I'd be afraid to ever go again and have it not live up to the memories.