The planning and research for our Alaska Adventure started about two years ago, when we decided this would be our 30th wedding anniversary celebration trip. The cruise dates and itinerary were selected and booked in October 2024, and bookings for everything else followed in late 2025. It was a long process, and finally came to fruition with an early morning direct flight from Chicago to Anchorage on Sunday, May 24, 2026 that covered 2,850 miles. Alaska, here we come!
We had an interesting start to the trip while printing our bag tags at the United Airlines kiosk, when one of the lenses in Mark’s glasses popped out and hit the floor. Uh oh. While he had another pair with him, these are his preferred glasses…not ideal to be without them for an 18-day trip. So, once we got through security, we found an Oakley store and Mark headed there to see if they could help. She was able to get the lens back in, but we weren’t sure it would hold for the entire trip. So, once we landed in Anchorage and picked up our rental car, our first stop was the nearest Costco store, since the glasses were purchased at Costco. The optician was able to more permanently repair the glasses and our vacation could truly begin! From the Costco parking lot, we got our first glimpse of amazing mountain views…a sneak peek of what was to come.
After a late lunch/early dinner in Anchorage, we started the drive South to Seward, Alaska. It was a cloudy but incredibly scenic drive along Alaska Highway 1, along the Turnagain Arm (so named because Captain Cook was forced to “turn again” when he didn’t find the fabled Northwest Passage), with views of the Chugach and Kenai mountains surrounding us and countless random waterfalls along the side of the road. At low tide, the mudflats along the road are known to mimic quicksand. We decided to believe that and not test them!
It took just over two hours to get to our hotel in Seward and I was anxious to start taking photos of this incredible landscape so I went for a short walk along the water.
Monday morning, we went to the Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center, about a two minute walk from our hotel. We watched the park film and checked out some of the exhibits, and then headed a bit further down the road to check in for our six-hour boat tour of the National Park. We boarded around 11:30 and by some miracle, it was a clear, sunny day with blue skies. It’s important to note that Kenai Fjords is in a temperate rainforest and gets heavy coastal rainfall ranging from 80 to 200 inches annually. The employees on the boat were all trying to figure out what the bright spot in the sky was…they rarely see it!
Mark and I both had some reservations about this tour…six hours on a small boat in potentially rough waters…could spell trouble! We both pre-medicated in the hopes that we wouldn’t get seasick, and thankfully, we both felt great for the entire trip through Resurrection Bay and Aialik Bay.
And the tour itself far exceeded our expectations! It was absolutely incredible. We saw more wildlife than we ever imagined – harbor seals, porpoise, mountain goats, humpbacks, orcas, sea lions, seals, otters, and puffins. The boat sat in an icefield full of bergy bits (medium-to-large iceberg chunks) and growlers (the smallest fragments). We saw Aialik Glacier up close, and witnessed calving where ice chunks break away from the edge of the glacier – wow! While it did get cloudier as the day went on, it didn’t take away from the overall experience.
After dinner in Seward and a good night’s sleep, we were back on the road on Tuesday, heading North toward Anchorage. We did make a quick stop at Exit Glacier which is the only part of Kenai Fjords that is accessible by road. Unfortunately, the rainforest climate had returned and it was 40 degrees with a cold drizzle, so the views weren’t too impressive. It did clear up as we headed further North, however.
We stopped for lunch and a grocery store run in Anchorage, knowing that there would be few options as we continued our journey North. Our destination for the day was Talkeetna, about two hours North of Anchorage (four hours total from Seward). The name means “where the rivers join”, and it serves as basecamp for many of the climbers trying to summit Denali. For any fans of the TV show “Northern Exposure”, Talkeetna is the real-world inspiration for the town of Cicely. 15 buildings in the town are on the National Register of Historic Places, and on a clear day, you can see Mt. Denali from town. We arrived at our cabin in the woods, and then ventured out to see the quaint downtown area.
On Wednesday, we once again continued North, to Denali National Park – about two hours from Talkeetna. Our first stop was to the Visitor Center, to watch one of the park films, and catch a bus to the Sled Dog Kennels. Denali is the only National Park with a kennel of sled dogs, and they do demonstrations daily during the summer. It’s such a uniquely Alaskan thing and was high on my list of things to see! The bus took us to the kennels where we could walk around and see the dogs, plus the new litter of five pups that were born in March. A ranger spoke about how the team at Denali uses sled dogs instead of snowmobiles to get around because the Wilderness Act strictly prohibits the use of motorized and mechanized vehicles. Plus, dogs are much more reliable in sub-zero temperatures and they don’t emit fumes or make noises that scare wildlife. It was so interesting, and the demonstration was cool to watch, as the dogs got excited to go on a short run for the crowd and were rewarded with treats.
From there, we took a drive into the park. Personal vehicles are only allowed to mile 15, and we drove almost that far. We stopped at Mountain Vista and using the signage there, we were sure we were seeing Mt. Denali in the distance. I took a walk along the loop trail there, thrilled and impressed that we were among the 30% of visitors who actually get to see Mt. Denali thanks to cloud cover hiding it 70% of the time. WooHoo!
Our hotel plans near Denali had a last-minute change…the hotel we were booked at notified us on Tuesday that they had to delay their opening for the season (most places in Alaska re-open for the summer around May 15th, so our trip is VERY early in the season) and had re-booked us at their sister property. We were grateful that we weren’t left stranded without a room, but the replacement hotel wasn’t great…the room was very dated, although thankfully it was clean. The property was so poorly laid out that it felt treacherous to go anywhere, and hot water was scarce. Oh well, it is the wilderness after all…we definitely didn’t expect The Ritz!
Thursday started bright and early, as I had an 8am reservation for a flightseeing tour of Denali National Park. Mark is not a fan of small planes but was very happy to cheer me on from the ground, so I booked this bucket-list experience. We drove about 15 minutes to Denali Air, checked in and weighed in, and at 8am, I boarded a Piper-8 with eight other passengers and the pilot. I had requested the co-pilot seat if possible, and was thrilled to find out that I would indeed be sitting in the cockpit! I was even more thrilled that the pilot was fully capable and did NOT need my assistance, since I had absolutely no idea what any of the controls or gauges were! We took off for our 60-minute tour over the park and it was amazing. I loved every minute of it…seeing the massive mountains from above, flying over alpine glaciers and snow-capped peaks. Majestic. Pristine. Jagged. There are so many ways to describe it, but at the same time, there are no words.
Once I came back down to solid ground (with a smile still on my face from the experience), we spent a little time wandering through the variety of shops in the ‘village’ near Denali, had lunch, and then headed back to the Denali Bus Depot for our afternoon Tundra Wilderness Tour. It’s a 5.5-hour tour on a converted school bus that goes as far as possible into the park – currently, mile 43 thanks to a landslide that closed the road in 2021. Since then, they’ve been building a new bridge and it’s expected to reopen in 2027.
Again, we had some concerns about this tour given the duration and the mode of travel, but again, it exceeded our expectations. We had a fantastic tour guide/bus driver, and the buses are equipped with wonderful technology that allows the driver to zoom in on distant wildlife and project it to screens throughout the bus, so we could get an up-close view, even if we were on the wrong side of the bus. We saw Dall sheep, fox, willow ptarmigans (Alaska’s state bird), porcupine, caribou, and the highlight – moose! Not one, but two, and both shortly after we boarded the bus! I’ve wanted to see a moose for so many years, and never did even on trips to places like Maine and Wyoming where moose are fairly common…FINALLY! They were females, so no big racks like the boys have, but still an incredibly imposing creature!
And, the real highlight of the trip – while the weather was nice most of the day, there were enough clouds that Mt. Denali was obscured for the first half of our tour. Then, miraculously, the clouds parted enough for us to see both peaks of the mountain, and to realize that we hadn’t actually seen it the day before even though we thought we had. Seeing both peaks is incredibly rare, and we only had a few minutes of visibility, but we are officially in the 30% club! Woo Hoo for real this time! Our tour guide was thrilled, and the only thing we didn’t get to see that she wanted us to see was a bear. Oh well, we did really well overall and felt like we truly experienced the greatness that is Denali National Park.
One very interesting fact that we learned about Denali (which means “the Tall One” in the Koyukon language) is that it has the highest vertical rise of any mountain in the world. While Everest is technically taller, it starts from a 17,000 ft plateau and rises about 12,000 feet. Denali starts from a 2,000 ft. plateau and rises over 18,000 feet!
Friday morning, we stopped back at the Visitor Center to see the other park film and the exhibits, and then we hit the road, heading South back to Anchorage, about 4.5 hours. The views continued to impress us – mountains all around, Sitka spruce lining the roads, and millions and millions of white-trunked birch trees everywhere. And, interestingly, the foliage had really popped in just a few days since our drive North – the leaves had filled in and it was so much more lush and green than it was on Tuesday and Wednesday!
We didn’t have much time in Anchorage, and high on our list was a visit to the ULU knife factory in downtown. I had never heard of an ULU knife until a few months ago, and once I learned more about them, I decided we needed to own one – it’s a fantastic design, perfect for all kinds of cutting and chopping, and is the must-have Alaska souvenir.
Saturday morning gave us some time to relax and get ready for the next phase of the trip…a Southbound cruise through the Inside Passage. Mid-morning, we headed towards the airport, enjoyed some views of Cook Inlet (named for Captain Cook, quite possibly a distant relative of mine!), and by sheer good luck and timing, we saw a black bear roaming the grounds near the airport! Wow! The elusive bear that we didn’t see at Denali and we happened upon one at the airport!
We returned our rental car, having driven almost 900 miles through a very small part of Alaska’s interior, and headed into the airport to wait for our transfer bus to take us to Whittier’s cruise port. On the bus ride, we saw bears, moose, eagles, and trumpeter swans. The route to Whittier includes a 2.5-mile, one-way tunnel that only allows traffic through to Whittier on the half hour – so timing is very important! It’s the longest combined vehicle and railroad tunnel in North America. We had time to make a quick stop near Portage Glacier, and then to the staging area to wait for our turn in the tunnel.
And with that, our time exploring the interior of Alaska has come to an end. It was full of nature’s majesty and more natural beauty than I ever thought possible. I’m thrilled with how well our itinerary worked out; all that planning and research paid off! Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy our seven-day cruise!