Alaska

Alaska

Anchorage with a trip to Denali National Park (aka Mt. McKinley)

Travelers to Anchorage may want to peruse Alaska Airlines' Anchorage City Guide or order the book Best Places Alaska online at the Alaska Airlines website for a 25% discount. It's great for maps and travel tips. Some hotels recommended by the book are the Bed & Breakfast on the Park, 3 star (800-353-0878); Copper Whale Inn, 3 star (907-258-7999); and the Anchorage Hilton Hotel, 2 star (800-245-2527). Restaurant suggestions include Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse, the Crow's Nest, Gesine's, and the Marx Bros. Cafe. While in Anchorage, visit the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Driving in Anchorage is easy with nice wide streets and not much traffic. From Anchorage, take a drive down the Old Seward Highway to Girdwood. The views are gorgeous on a sunny day (even on a cloudy day). In Girdwood there is the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, an animal sanctuary where they rehabilitate wild animals of all kinds - caribou, grizzly bears, elk, black bear, musk ox, deer, moose, owls - all sorts of beautiful creatures. It's worth the price to drive in and look around. Chugach State Park is a nice drive; check in at the Visitors Center and get a map and information. It's important to be oriented in Alaska.

Before entering Denali National Park, stop at the Riley Creek Visitor Center to park your car and take a guided bus tour through the park area to enjoy the scenery without any fears of getting lost. Also, the place is huge, and there's much more in-depth local information with a proper guide. The tours give travelers plenty of time to get out, walk around, and take photos. To spend the night in the park, try the Denali Princess Lodge (800-426-0500) or the Denali Wilderness Lodge (800-541-9779).

A lot of Alaskan souvenirs are of natural materials - furs, skins, bone, etc. There are beautiful carved boxes and objects and lots of totem work miniatures. For authentic native crafts at good prices, Best Places Alaska recommends the gift shop at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Also, native women called Oomingmak have a co-op of crafts. There's more info at their website.

Trip Report - Anchorage - November 2003

Whee-hoo, just got back from Anchorage - mountains, mountains everywhere and lots of big oil company buildings in the downtown area. Hmm.

Wildlife - It's not uncommon to see moose wandering the town, as is confirmed by the numerous moose crossing signs along the roads, but alas, this time we were coming up empty on our suburban wildlife watching adventure. We visited the animal sanctuary in Girdwood about an hour's drive down the old Seward Highway. The sanctuary takes in abandoned or injured wildlife and rehabilitates them, although some animals cannot survive again in the wild so they live out their lives there. We saw a beautiful girl grizzly, two black bears, elk, caribou, deer, musk ox, a wild boar, buffalo, and moose. The animals had lots of room to roam in their areas and could hide if they wanted to (always an important feature, in my mind anyway, when it comes to zoolike environments).

Snow - Anchorage in November is usually quite snowy, I'm told, but there wasn't snow at all in the city, and we were treated to one day of sunshine as we drove back from Girdwood which was an amazing surprise. You could see snow on the Chugach Mountains, of course. The locals call it "termination dust." It sort of signifies the termination of summer, and for the weeks leading up to winter, it just looks like more and more white dust is lightly collecting downward on the mountains.

Food - We had a lovely big breakfast at the Snow City Cafe. We waited an hour to be seated and served, but it was actually really worth the wait - the best crab omelet I've ever encountered. We had late night dinner and drinks at Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse, a fun place with live music, a diverse crowd, and really good service. There aren't that many deals to be had in Anchorage. Its location alone ensures the locals have the bargaining power - and that prices are "up there" - but it's Alaska so you just adapt.

Accommodations

ALYESKA HOSTEL
P.O. Box 953
Girdwood, AK 99587
(907) 783-2222

ANCHORAGE GUEST HOUSE
2001 Hillcrest Drive
Anchorage, AK 99517
(907) 274-0408

HI-ANCHORAGE
700 H Street
Anchorage, AK 99501
(907) 276-3635
INTERNATIONAL BACKPACKERS INN & HOSTEL
3601 Peterkin Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99508
(907) 274-3870

SPENARD HOSTEL INTERNATIONAL
2845 West 42nd Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99517
(907) 248-5036

Anchorage Visitor's Bureau

Trip Report - Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula, and Denali National Park - August 2004

I just got back from Alaska, and man, what a trip. Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula, Denali National Park, etc. "Sunset" at 11, etc. Epic. Moose, bald eagles, caribou, porcupines, salmon, glaciers, mountains, rivers, tidal bores, speed traps, etc. Such a beautiful state. Unbelievable adventure.

I was there for 8 days, starting and finishing in Anchorage. We stayed in some dumpy motels in Anchorage, a B&B in Girdwood (on the way to Kenai), a dumpy place on the Kenai, and a hostel outside of Denali National Park. I say dumpy because $100 a night gets you a dump. Lodging is very expensive, as is a rental car. I worked very hard to haggle a $55 per day Chevy Cavalier. Such a deal! We rented a tent in the Denali hostel, and that was $55/day. In hindsight, it would have been better to rent a small RV, rather than the car/crash pad route. There are places to camp/park darn near everywhere. Food is quite expensive as well.

I found the Alaskan people to be quite mellow and very friendly. They really were quite helpful. The fishing was pretty cool. I had some good karma and got excellent advice from some locals, including the Russian River location. I lucked out and caught about 5 different species, with the biggest about 10 pounds. On my 8-pound test outfit it was quite a fight.

The long daylight hours were cool but strange. Even when the sun is below the horizon, it didn't get very dark. In the tent at 2:30 in the morning there was plenty of light.

Re: Denali, unless you have several days, I don't think it is worth the trip. The only way to see much nature is on a Park Service school bus, and the shortest trip is 6 hours. If you don't plan on going on any of those tours, you can see the same wildlife throughout the state. Several different locals told me that Mt. McKinley is cloudy about 25% of the time. We lucked out.

The Kenai Peninsula was awesome. There are woods, rivers, streams, and glaciers darn near everywhere. We hiked an hour in to the Russian River Falls and saw huge salmon trying to leap over them. I found out yesterday that the spot we were at is featured in National Geographic. Unfortunately, the shutters on my cameras weren't fast enough to capture the spectacle. Some of the salmon were 4 feet long and looked about 50 pounds. These massive fish were hurling themselves into the falls.

We checked out Seward. Other than fishing and hiking, there isn't much there, there.

Animals we saw included Dall sheep, moose (we are talking only 15 feet away), bald eagle, caribou, porcupines, etc. Thousands of salmon as well. One interesting thing about Alaska is there are bear warnings everywhere. While we were hiking back from the Falls, we heard a bear very close to our path. A bit unsettling. We hiked on a trail at the Byron Glacier, and a bear was sighted on it no more than 15 minutes before we got there.

My girlfriend is doing an Alaskan cruise next month. I'm very curious about it. We saw just as much as one could see from land but, of course, without the pampering. It is interesting. The cruise rates end in places out in BFE like Seward. It ain't cheap to travel within Alaska so cruisers should factor those charges into account.

Trip Report - Ketchikan - June 2003

Ketchikan was my first introduction to Alaska. I loved the slow, isolated feel of this town. You just get a sense of its rough and tumble roots (actually, some of the rougher folks are still tumbling around!). Ketchikan is on Revillagigedo Island and is the southernmost Alaskan port when traveling along the Inside Passage. It's an hour and a half flight from Seattle. Once you arrive, you need to take the ferry from the airport to actually get to Ketchikan ($4). It only takes about 4 minutes, which was a tiny bit disappointing. Map of Alaska

I guess Ketchikan is the fourth largest city in Alaska and used to be the salmon capital, but now it just seems to be a spot for cruise ships to stop into a couple times a day so it’s one tourist shop after another along the waterfront in the downtown area. Everything closes up at 5 p.m. — it’s a bit depressing that the whole town is on cruise ship time, but oh well. A lot of shopkeepers asked which cruise ship we were on, and when we said we’d just flown up for the weekend, they were quite surprised. Apparently “people never do that.” Interesting. I guess the cost of flying is a bit prohibitive - Alaska Airlines is about the only airline flying up there from the lower 48, and an average ticket price ranges from $400 - $700. (If I hadn’t been able to fly for free, I doubt I would have made the trip either for that price.)

Ketchikan has a population of about 15,000 and gets over 13 feet of rain per year. The downtown area is teeming with seaplane tours, boat tours, duck tours (land and water craft), and adventure hosts — you name it, there’s a company ready to take you out and about. The duck boat company had a great time following a huge gray whale around just outside the harbor the day before, but since there was no trace of it on the day we were there, we opted for the wilderness tour.

We saw eagles. There are eagles everywhere in this town! We were advised to look for the white dots in the pine trees, and it was sure to be an eagle’s head. We got out our binoculars, and sure enough, we saw them dotting the mountainsides everywhere we looked. Males and females both have white heads, and the females are larger than the males. The juvenile eagles don't have white heads and are speckled with brown, gray and black, but they can be as big as adult eagles. It’s the start of salmon season so the water edges are sparsely lined with sport fisherman, and the eagles were perched 8 to a tree and swooping nearby for anything that gets left behind. Unless you're in Alaska, you have never seen that many eagles that close up in the wild. They're magnificent! Oh, and if you see a feather by the side of the creek, don't even think about taking it home with you - if you get busted, it's a $40,000 fine! Only native peoples are allowed to use eagle feathers
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Accommodations - Please don't EVER stay at the Super 8 in Ketchikan. Our stay there was a superb lesson in “you get what you pay for.” We were treated to a midnight keg party of high school kids in the room above ours bouncing and stomping from wall to wall, and it took an hour for the hotel staff to get them to quiet down. But it all started again at 4 a.m. so we really shouldn’t have had them bother. Some more reputable hotels and B&Bs in the area can be found here. A colleague who has spent lots of time in this area recommends the lodge and resort experience highly. And yes, they do have a hostel in town, which was not known to me until after we left: Eagle View Hostel.

Food - The seafood at all of the restaurants we visited was excellent. The prawns, scallops and halibut were divine. I can recommend the New York Hotel and Café for lunch, Annabelle’s for dinner (formal or casual), and Oceanview for a huge, well-priced menu with super-friendly staff.

Stuff To Do - For a weekend you can easily do the entire walking tour of Ketchikan. Start with downtown and mosey up to Creek Street where the “ladies of the line” used to work and Dolly’s House (a former bordello) is now a museum. There’s an awesome employment application in the front window of her former home that asks all sorts of interesting questions like “Are you currently in love?” and “What is the size of your unmentionables?” There's the Deer Mountain Tribal Hatchery and Eagle Center which is a lifelong home to injured eagles. There's lots of opportunities for sport fishing, biking, guided tours by bus or trolley, and hiking. There's also the Totem Heritage Center with gorgeous examples of Tlingit and Haida totem carvings. The Southeast Alaska Discovery Center is really well done. It’s a modern interpretive center on the city of Ketchikan and greater Alaska. It houses beautiful totems and exhibits. They have a rain forest diorama with local wildlife, including a bear, deer, and lots of unique bird species. We watched two great videos while there, one on the Misty Fjords National Monument and one on Ketchikan, “land where the people live.” There’s this great lodgelike room with videos and guidebooks on everything Alaska — it was very interesting to just sit back and read before heading out on our adventures. You can take a seaplane or boat to Misty Fjords and stay for a day or week. It’s pristine wilderness, and many people go there to kayak, camp and commune with nature. You won’t run into another person for miles, if not days, they said. You can expect to see bears, seals, eagles, and whales at the right times of year. You need to know your survival skills if you're going to be left alone out in this area.

Ketchikan Visitor's Bureau