Back from Alaska! Awesome sailing and bummer at Denali National Park
I feel like our trips are getting longer... and like we can't escape travel disasters. This time half of our Alaska trip got foiled and we had to scramble during the 4th of July. Good times...
After being in Alaska for three weeks we are HOME! We thoroughly enjoyed our adventure and I was reminded of why I fell in love with the Last Frontier when I moved there 24 years ago. This week for my newsletter I just want to share about our time in Alaska. I haven’t written about it on the blog yet or put all my videos up on socials, so consider this a sneak peek into what was an incredible family experience.
So here’s a little background to me living in Alaska. Fresh outta high school I hightailed it to Denali National Park where I worked for Princess Cruise Lines in the land operations. This was a great summer job, so I worked both up at Denali and down on the Kenai Peninsula (based near Seward). I worked in lodges and as a driver guide, and on the Kenai as a horseman trail guide, getting to see lots of Alaska and so much wildlife. I fished all the time and got to have amazing hiking days all the time.
This trip was my first time back in Alaska since I left at the end of the season in 2004, so it’s been 20 years. Also, I got to come back with my family this time which made it extra special. We hit up my old stomping grounds and visited with friends. We also had part of our trip get up-ended and our whole visit to Denali National Park get cancelled. Good times. Here’s everything awesome about this trip, and then I’ll get into the bummer.
Alaska UnCruise on the Inside Passage
If you recall, we did an UnCruise Adventure in Hawaii in February, and it was a blast. It was our family and then a whole bunch of adults, exploring the islands and jumping in the ocean. This trip was very different as it was specifically a Kids in Nature sailing, so it was an itinerary that was both totally Alaska-wilderness and kid-friendly. I wasn’t sure just what to expect, as UnCruise itineraries are published purposefully vague so that the best trip possible can be crafted and tweaked as the week passes. When we sailed in Hawaii this was stressful to me initially, but for our Alaska trip I just rolled with it and had the best time.
We sailed from Juneau, heading south before turning north. Great food and continual humpback whales was the theme for most of the week. Instead of pulling into cruise ports like Sitka or Skagway, we pulled into small bays and explored the island of the Tongass National Forest. We visited Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof Islands, and then wrapped our week up with a visit to Glacier Bay National Park (and I got my Junior Ranger badge).
So what did we do for our activities if we weren’t stopping in cruise ports? So much! Every day we had a variety of options depending on what bay we were anchored in and the weather. We enjoyed kayaking with sea otters, shore walks with bald eagles, skiff rides while sea lions chased our boat and more. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was actually bushwhacking. We hiked through the forest looking for wildlife and interesting plants, learning about the ecosystem and just having fun squishing through the mud in our galoshes. It was such a different version of Alaska than I have known.
With all this, there was an added kid-focused element. When we’d do excursions and activities there was grade-appropriate education and activities, and then when there were nightly presentations about different Alaska topics there was lots of kid-led question time. Even the adults on our ship who didn’t bring kids enjoyed this sort of experience. Daily there was also time in the afternoons without kiddos as they would bust out the microscopes and games with the expedition staff down in the Pesky Barnacle Saloon. Really, it was an incredible week.
For more UnCruise Info…
We’ve got a lot of information on our website all about UnCruise, as we’ve been working with them for since last year. They’re one of our year-round partners (not just during Pride month) and they’ve been awesome in how they let us share the sorts of information and content that we think is the most important. As we settle back into being home I’m sure we’ll have some fresh podcast episodes to share, some more articles both about our UnCruise sailing and our overall Alaska itinerary, and of course lots of fun social media stuff (videos and pictures).
In the meantime here are some links to learn more about our experiences and consider whether an UnCruise is right for you:
It’s tricky to share what we’re doing while we’re doing it because being on an expedition ship means being without Wi-Fi and more often than not beyond cell service. As we work on stuff to share, please let us know if you have any questions. I love talking about our trips and am happy to provide lots of details (including costs and cost comparisons, cuz I really dug into it).
Our Alaska Mainland Trip
I will be writing about our Alaska road trip in detail, but here are our highlights. We flew from Juneau into Anchorage to pickup our rental car (OMG, Alaskan rental cars are expensive) and then spent the night in ANC, hanging with a friend and doing laundry. The next day we headed to the Kenai Peninsula, specifically Cooper Landing, to enjoy my favorite sights and hikes, and visit my old lodge. We got to see an Alaskan brown bear REALLY CLOSE on the Russian River, and then had a great stay at the Seward Windsong Lodge (blog post to come soon!).
Next up was Kenai Fjords National Park. I’ve been here countless times, either hiking at Exit Glacier or on a boat. Our boat trip to Northwestern Glacier in the National Park was beyond epic. We got to see humpback whales bubble net feeding, transient orcas hunting sea lions, and saw more puffins than we could have counted. Add to that all kinds of other wildlife and a huge glacier ice fall (different than calving) and it was an amazing adventure.
Lots of little hikes, visiting Portage Glacier, floating Willow Creek and the Susitna River and just lots of fun stops made for a great start to our mainland Alaska trip (full itinerary coming to the blog). And then the forest fire hit…
Epic Trip: FOILED AGAIN
So, if you recall, in November we traveled to Hawaii and once there, the main part of our trip got cancelled, so we had to pivot and scramble to find hotels and a plan. Welp, guess what happened for the interior Alaska portion of this trip… Forest fire at Denali National Park. When the photos broke out, it was literally the lodge we were booked at directly in front of the flames in every picture. Each day I called the Chalets to ask if there was a plan and each day they said they didn’t have power so couldn’t check in guests… and then the Park itself also closed (it is set to reopen on July 10th). Our planned activities were shut down and we started getting cancellations.
So, if this is happening to us, that means it’s also happening to thousands of other people who’ve planned an epic adventure in Denali National Park. Since we now didn’t have a place to stay for the last stretch of our trip, we had to find something fast, which we did… and then got a message from the cabin owner that the property had been double booked and my reservation would be cancelled. So there we were, sitting in Talkeetna, Alaska with no place to go and no backup plan. When we got to our planned accommodations at the Talkeetna Wilderness Lodge the manage was able to block out a small cabin for us for our remaining days. It was welcome accommodations, even though it meant having one kid sleeping on the floor for a few nights.
We still got to do tundra hiking and see some pretty incredible places. We picked some state parks for hiking, got out on the Susitna River on a jet boat (like in Hells Canyon), and got to drive Hatcher Pass, which was beautiful. All in all, we ended up having a wonderful time despite our well laid plans being struck down.
So yeah, that’s our Alaska trip in a nutshell. We really had an amazing time and I am once again reminded how adventurous and resilient the kids are. They had fun playing Scrabble with new friends on our sailing and slipping into icy streams in the mountains. I’ll never not be thankful for the things we get to do together, and that some of it even gets to be work.
Next week I aim to have lots of great photos and maybe a video or two to share, but not guarantees. Settling back into home life sometimes takes a few days. Thank you for following along on our journeys, and if you have any questions about the things we do or places we go, don’t hesitate to ask!
Have an awesome week ahead!