Just back..........

[stan wood]

We just returned from Anchorage this morning. What a glorious 8 days! I will give a brief review and if there are any specific questions, I will be glad to try to answer them

 

Saturday (July 8)-flew to Anchorage-took shuttle to motel and went to bed

Sunday-walked around Anchorage for a couple hours-picked up rental car and drove to Denali

Monday-took 11 hour shuttle through park to Wonder Lake-excellent driver, trip, and weather (near 80 degrees)

Tuesday-drove back to Anchorage-stopped in Talkeetna and had breakfast at the Roadhouse (WOW_never saw so much food) drove to Soldotna-relatives live there and it provided a base

Wednesday-rested from all the driving and visited.

Thursday-drove to Seward for 8 hour cruise with Major Marine Tours-exceptional cruise with again excellent weather

Friday-went to Homer to fish halibut-weather turned windy and after short boat ride decided that no fish was worth the possible danger and cancelled.

Saturday-went dipnetting sockeye (reds) on Kenai

Sunday-drove back to Anchorage and flew home

 

Quick thoughts-

 

1. Listen to BQ and the other locals that know so much about the area. They have so much valuable information to share.

2. Weather was excellent. About 5 minutes of total light showers during trip.

3. If doing much driving, have a copy of The Milepost. Alaska roads are not always marked as well as some other states.

4. Tourists have different interests, tastes, and bank accounts. What works for one may not work for all.

 

Thanks to Budget Queen and others for making our vacation so great. Again, if there are any specific questions, I wil be happy to go into more detail and try to assist.

[stired]

In your opinion, is there enough to do in Talkeetna to stay overnight? We were thinking of driving from Girdwood to Talkeetna, go on a glacier flightseeing trip there, then stay overnight, then drive to Denali (staying in Healy) the next day. I know Talkeetna isn't very far from Anchorage, but it just seems like a long day to drive all the way to Healy with flightseeing thrown in.

[NancyIL]

Welcome back, and thanks for the review! I've read quite a few trip reports from people who cruised without doing a land tour, but haven't read many reports from people that did a land-only trip. I'm finding that planning the cruise is the easy part, and the land portion is much more difficult if doing an independent tour.

 

Where did you stay in Anchorage and Denali? You had quite a long drive from Denali to Soldotna on Tuesday....how long did it take? Would you change anything if you were planning it again? Did you consider doing any flightseeing while in Talkeetna?

[stan wood]

First a little background before I answer questions. DW and I are in mid-50's and had not been this far north. We live in rural Washington state without neighbors and 10 miles from the nearest town. I did spend 2 summers in Southeast Alaska fishing 35 years ago.

 

Girdwood to Healy is a bit over 300 miles with the detour to Talkeetna (which is about halfway there). That's about a 6 hour leisurely drive without rest stops and photos. Flight seeing trips are 1.5 to 10 hours at one site I looked at. Throw in meals and it would seem like you have a long day which could be really fatiguing.

 

We were in Talkeetna for about 2.5 hours and would have liked to stay longer. Our impressions-beautiful little town off the main highway, loaded with cute little shops run by native Alaskans. There is a museum we tried to see (closed for lunch or something) and nice looking parks along the river.

 

My recommendation would be to spend the night. If you run out of things to do, get up early and leave for Healy before the others. A final thought to everyone-top off your tank at the station on the main road (about milepost 100). Gas is 45 cents a gallon more in Cantwell and Denali.

[stan wood]

Some great questions-two things immediately come to mind (other than having more time) that I would have done differently. One-when we cruised the Caribbean we found this site. Since we were not cruising I did not think of it until I had already booked airfare, motels, and car. I booked using the net-but without everyone's help. Two-I would have had copy of The Milepost. I'm afraid to think of what we may have missed because we did not know it was there.

 

In Anchorage we stayed at the Inlet Inn. It's old, far from fancy, but was clean. It does have a website and shuttle-which was important since we were to arrive about 1 am in a strange town. It was a good place with a bed and shower. Only problem was that we left the window open and there were gulls nesting on the roof that made noise throughout the night. It is in a nice location for a walk around town and trip to the museum on the Alaskan earthquake in '64.

 

In Denali we stayed at the Denali Salmonbake. We had this neat little cabin reserved-but two days before we left we checked weather.com and saw that the forecasts were much better for the beginning of the week. So we flopped our trip and went to Denali at the beginning instead of the end of our trip. It turned out to be a good decision except that we did not get our cousin's Milepost as planned.

 

All that was left was a "tent cabin". Good beds and pillows-but NOTHING else. They did have good food at their restaurant which seats 200. Also, they provided a shuttle to the National Park.

 

Denali to Soldotna was about 420 miles with our detour to Talkeetna. We left Denali around 7:30, went to Talkeetna for 2.5 hours, changed cars in Anchorage and arrived around 6:00 pm. We stopped every 50-60 miles to stretch our legs and many times to take pictures from Anchorage to the turnoff for Soldotna. That has to be one of the prettiest highways in the country-especially with the sun shining.

 

We thought about flightseeing when looking at the pictures in Talkeetna with the beautiful weather-but DW and I are not the bravest in a small plane and we were not overly confident in our rental car.

 

The smartest thing we probably did was to stop at Costco in Anchorage after picking up our rental. We bought a cooked pizza, a dozen muffins, a bunch of banana, trailmix, a case of water and Sunny Delight for about $30.00. It avoided stopping for meals while traveling and provided a great lunch through Denali.

 

I hope this helps. If there is anything else, let me know.