Alaska
The one trip almost everyone puts off and nobody regrets. Glaciers, bears, and a summer that barely gets dark.
A state that runs on daylight and water
Alaska is a fifth the size of the rest of the United States combined and has fewer people in it than the city of Boston. Most of it has no roads at all, which is why so much of travel here happens by ship, floatplane or the Alaska Railroad. The Inside Passage — the sheltered channel of islands and fjords running up the southeast panhandle — is the reason cruising and Alaska became almost synonymous.
The culture is a genuine layering rather than a theme. Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian communities have been in the southeast for millennia and their clan houses and totem work are living, not museum pieces. Russian Orthodox onion domes still stand in Sitka and Kodiak from the colonial era. Gold-rush storefronts in Skagway date to a two-year stampede in 1897–98. And in Anchorage and Fairbanks you find a plainly modern American city that happens to sit under the northern lights.
The practical thing to understand is the season. Cruise and tour operations run roughly mid-May to mid-September and then close. May and September are cheaper, quieter and cooler with a real chance of rain; late June through July gives you the long light and the best odds on Denali showing itself, which it does only about a third of the time. If the northern lights are the goal, that is a different trip entirely — late August through April, based in Fairbanks.
Alaska, four ways
What we'd actually send you to do
Not an exhaustive list — the handful of things our travelers come home talking about.
Things to do
- Take the day boat into Kenai FjordsOut of Seward, past sea otters and puffins to a tidewater glacier that calves while you watch. The best single day in the state for most travelers.
- Ride the Alaska RailroadAnchorage to Denali or Seward in a dome car. Slow, unhurried, and the only way to see country the highway never reaches.
- Fly out to a bear-viewing platformKatmai or Lake Clark by floatplane in July and August, when the brown bears are working the salmon runs at close range.
- Walk on a glacierMatanuska is drive-up and guided; Mendenhall is a short trip from Juneau. Crampons provided, no experience needed.
- Fish for salmon or halibutHomer and Seward run half-day charters that will ship your catch home frozen.
Places to go
- The Inside PassageKetchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Icy Strait Point — the classic seven-night cruise, and rightly so.
- Denali National ParkSix million acres, one road, and the highest peak in North America. Best reached as a cruise-tour land extension.
- The Kenai PeninsulaSeward, Homer and the drive south from Anchorage — arguably the prettiest stretch of road in the state.
- Glacier Bay National ParkOnly a limited number of ships are permitted in each day. If it is on your itinerary, that itinerary is worth paying for.
- Fairbanks & the interiorNorthern lights, hot springs and the Arctic Circle — a winter trip, not a summer one.
Things to see
- Hubbard or Dawes Glacier calvingIce the colour of old bottle glass shearing off a face six storeys high. The sound arrives after the sight.
- Humpbacks bubble-net feedingA cooperative hunting behaviour seen reliably off Juneau in July and August, and almost nowhere else.
- Totem poles at Sitka and KetchikanThe largest standing collections in the world, in the communities that carved them.
- Denali itselfTwenty thousand feet of it, if the weather is on your side.
- The Skagway gold-rush districtTwo blocks of preserved 1898 boomtown, run by the National Park Service.
On the table in Alaska
Dishes to order
- King and sockeye salmonGrilled simply, or smoked over alder. Anything else on the menu is optional.
- Halibut, fresh off the boatBeer-battered at a Homer dockside shack is the correct format.
- King crab legsExpensive everywhere. Still worth doing once, in Ketchikan or Juneau.
- Reindeer sausageOn a breakfast plate or in a bun from an Anchorage street cart.
Where locals eat
- Dockside shacks in HomerThe Spit is lined with them and the fish came off a boat that morning.
- Anchorage brewpubsA serious craft-beer town with kitchens to match.
- Lodge dining roomsOn a cruise-tour land segment, the lodge is usually the only kitchen for many miles — and better than that suggests.
What to drink
- Alaskan AmberBrewed in Juneau since 1986 from a gold-rush-era recipe.
- Spruce-tip aleA seasonal local oddity worth ordering once.
- Coffee, constantlyAlaska has drive-through espresso huts at a density that has to be seen.
Let's put dates on Alaska
Alaska sells out early — the good cabins and the Denali land segments go a year ahead. Tell us roughly when you'd like to travel and we'll come back with real options and current pricing.
