Alaska Week - September 2008

The bf and I are not good vacation planners.  The main reason is a regrettable lack of practice.  But we decided that we were going on a vacation this summer and that we were going to Alaska.  It's somewhere we've wanted to go for a long time, including murmurs of a trip driving to Alaska.  With only a week, something a little more practical was required, and since the Alaska sites said that if you only go for a week, you had to see Denali and Seward, we decided to see Denali and Seward.

Anyway, all summer long, we kept talking about the trip, but somehow the planning never happened.  Finally, in late July, I put my foot down and insisted that we take the time and effort to research plan the trip so that it would actually happen. Of course, by "we", I mean "I".  Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that various work and family obligations and the last minute nature of the planning required us to visit during the end of the summer season in chilly September.  And because I decided that there was no way I was missing my team's first soccer game of the fall season, I decided (since "I" was doing all of the planning) that we had to go after Setpember 6.

A little exploration made two things abundantly clear.  First, Alaska is kind of expensive.  I didn't see that coming.  Second, while the "shoulder" season (the last couple of weeks of the summer season) is cheaper, there were a few things that we might have wanted to do that we couldn't because they start shutting down in September.  But none of this was really a big deal.  Given that we don't ever take vacations and who knows when we'll ever take another one, we were comfortable splurging a little bit.  Also by planning ourselves, we could maximize the thriftiness of our trip. Moreover, our main goals were to see Mt. McKinley and glaciers and we could still do both that late in the season.

After browsing sample trips on various websites, we cobbled together a journey to Anchorage, then Denali, then Seward for a glacier cruise, and then back to Anchorage.  Kantishna Roadhouse was recommended by multiple people, but we had to admit that we were too rugged, well, really too cheap, for that this time.  And the brevity of our trip made it hard to stay there long enough to take advantage of all the benefits.

Looking at more modest accomodations and activities, over a few nights, we booked everything and sat back, giddily anticipating the start of the trip (and deciding we didn't need to get travel insurance because that was for suckers).  Of course, things quickly fell apart when we found out that there weren't any seats left on the Denali Park bus tour we wanted - thankfully our Denali hotel and the bus tour were run by the same company so the very nice woman at Doyon Tourism who called me was able to push back the start of our Denali stay by one day so we could go on the tour (and save $80 on our first night of lodging!).  And the just as nice woman at Kenai Fjords Tours was able to move our cruise from Seward from Thursday to Monday so that it would all work.  Unfortunately, it turned out that by pushing our trip to Denal back a day, we missed out on the last day of the Denali Express coach, meaning we couldn't go hiking the first afternoon in Denali because we couldn't leave Anchorange for Denali until the afternoon, which also meant we probably couldn't want to go rafting in Denali because we'd rather hike than raft we had time for only one.  (Not to mention the night we tried to book our plane reservations - the very last thing we did - and none of the online booking sites would work properly.)

Lesson learned.  Start planning a little earlier next time.  Or maybe get a travel agent. Alas, in the end, we planned and booked not quite the trip we planned on the whiteboard above, but something close enough and still exciting.

Oh, and thanks to this - "Alaska Airlines cancels 41 flights due to volcanic ash" - we caved and bought trip insurance. We're suckers, I know.