I was so excited to see this pop up in the feed today!
The two times I’ve been to Alaska have been my favorite trips I’ve ever gone on, it’s such an incredibly vast, beautiful, humbling place and definitely somewhere I plan to return to again.
There was surprisingly little National Parks conversations in this episode aside from the passing mention of Denali! Alaska has so much more to offer than just Denali with Wrangell-St Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Katmai, Glacier Bay, as well as preserves and forests.
First time I went was in summer of 2019 - a group of 7 of us went and spent some time in Anchorage, drove down to Seward for a night and hiked the Harding Ice Field Trail. Then we drove north and east into Wrangell-St Elias and spent a couple of days there exploring McCarthy and Kennicott before heading into the backcountry for a multi day hike.
Returned last summer with just one other buddy (think we scared off the others from our last trip) and went back to into the Wrangell backcountry. After that we hopped a flight to Fairbanks, had two others fly from the contiguous United States to meet us, and we rented a truck and drove the Dalton Highway up to Prudhoe Bay to swim in the Arctic.
Here’s a quick photo dump from my adventures - next time I go I’ll have to make time to find a course to check it off the states played in list.
I haven’t finished the episode yet but @carrforthecourse need some ‘splainin. You’re a native Alaskan and never gutted a fish or killed an animal??? Never been to Fairbanks and pretty much shit on the Aleutian Islands. What the heck have you done in Alaska?
Those are some glorious Alaskan experiences. Tourist like you help keep the lights on. Keep visiting this wonderful state.
Next time check out Prince of Whales Island in Southeast. It’s beautiful.
I am almost completely against cruise ships, howevvvvaa Alaskan cruise is about the only one I can get behind. I would happily return to keep the lights on @carrforthecourse , thanks for sharing!
Was very excited to dive into this episode and enjoyed it thoroughly; wife lived in Anchorage for 2.5 years while we were dating (work for big oil) and I visited several times. We did a lot of the big tourist attractions but there’s so much to do and see that it needs repeats visits. @carrforthecourse we’re actually looking at doing a last minute trip up in a few weeks, wife will work at her friend’s house but I’ll be on vacation and bringing the clubs; I played Anchorage Golf Course once before but would love some company if we make the trip work
I went to Skagway once as a kid but I don’t really remember it (it was for my friend’s sister’s violin recital when I was visiting them in Whitehorse YK). Would love to get to Alaska sometime for real as an adult.
Alaska is on my list of dream trips. But being about as far away as possible and still be in the United States makes a trip there more difficult to pull off at this stage of my life. But someday I’ll get there.
I know it seem Strapped is on life support, but I really wish we could have @MerchCzar and @Randy take their talents to The Last Frontier. I’d guess they’ve had enough of the #vanlife, but this would have been even cooler in Alaska than it was in NM.
@Tron as a fellow United loyalist, there are a lot of good/easy options for United to ANC. There’s a daily round trip to DEN all year, then they add flights over the summers; 5.5 hours to Denver and since it lands around 6am, it’s easy to get home in the late morning/afternoon after that. Believe they also keep the ORD flight year round, and another popular one is the seasonal route to IAH. It was such an eye opening experience the first couple times I went up there; I took a flight on the company plane up to the Slope and it left around 8am and the airport was completely dead/most places were closed. It really pops around 6-7pm until the last flights leave after midnight
Question that I imagine has been covered before, but as someone who found NLU after trap draw episode 16 - why is it not listed anywhere? @Randy mentioned it in closing?
Wife and I are heading to Anchorage, Alaska in August. She will be participating in Run Anchorage on Sunday. We are currently planning on Seward/Kenjai National Park Cruise on Monday and Denali Tuesday-Thursday. Any recommendations on booking travel to those places (bus or train)? Any recommendations of places to stay while around Denali?
