Alaska cruise and land tour

Hello, so excited for my upcoming first cruise to Alaska 2018 and could use all the help I can get. I have done a lot of research but would like to hear your expert advice. We will disembark in Whittier and head to anchorage to rent a car, then off to Seward, then back to anchorage, talkeetina, Denali then back to anchorage for our flight home. I/we like hikes on a small scale,exploring the culture, and sceneries. My question

1- do we want to stay in Whittier on do the 26 glacier cruise? Then take a train to anchorage?

2- I keep reading about stops at portage glacier and Girdwood, what's the best way to explore them? Before or after anchorage or on our way back from Seward.

3- we are somehow flexible with time but would like to keep it between 7-10 days, so what would be your perfect itinerary?

Thank you in advance and looking forward to hearing from you.

Hello, so excited for my upcoming first cruise to Alaska 2018 and could use all the help I can get. I have done a lot of research but would like to hear your expert advice. We will disembark in Whittier and head to anchorage to rent a car, then off to Seward, then back to anchorage, talkeetina, Denali then back to anchorage for our flight home. I/we like hikes on a small scale,exploring the culture, and sceneries. My question

1- do we want to stay in Whittier on do the 26 glacier cruise? Then take a train to anchorage?

2- I keep reading about stops at portage glacier and Girdwood, what's the best way to explore them? Before or after anchorage or on our way back from Seward.

3- we are somehow flexible with time but would like to keep it between 7-10 days, so what would be your perfect itinerary?

Thank you in advance and looking forward to hearing from you.

One place to start would be on the Alaska forum here on cruise critic:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=365&f=55

We did 7-day northbound cruise (to Seward), took the train to Anchorage to pick up rental car, drove back to Seward where we: went to the Alaska Sealife Center

Oops that posted itself! Don't know what I hit. Anyway, we spent two weeks self-driving after the one week cruise. We did take our time including meeting up with two different "penpals" from a different forum. To condense it down to your time range:

Take cruiseline's transport to Anchorage (?), pick up rental car, drive to Seward.

At least two days in Seward: Alaska Sealife Center and Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center (in town near waterfront), Exit Glacier (part of NP accessible by land), whale-watch boatride (there are several companies, we went with Major Marine on a dinner cruise).

Lunch in Anchorage (choice of good brew-pubs) on way to Palmer.

At least two days in Palmer: local museum in town is small but quite worthwhile, drive loop around Hatcher Pass, qiviut ranch (if you have any interest at all OR if you have kids). Airboat to Knik Glacier. We drove to Glacier View on Hwy1 (Glenn Hwy) but found that to go to the glacier was an extra-fee road and didn't do that. Skip that drive, although we did see a moose in the road, bc you're going to be driving plenty of Alaska roads anyway. In 2009 there was a laundromat a couple doors down from a barroom and not far from the museum, if you're needing one! (The only pay-laundry in Seward was at a private campground outside of town!) Or have everything you'll need laundered near the end of your cruise.

Talkeetna: lunch at brewpub. We did not stay over here. Denali would be a long day's drive; we stayed over at Mary's McKinley View Lodge at Parks Hwy (Rt 3) mile marker 134.5. (We did not see the Mountain anywhere along this drive.) I see there is also a lodge at Trapper Creek mile 115 that advertised rooms with Denali view.

Minimum two days at Denali: outer visitor center and dog-camp demonstration; shuttle-bus ride to inner visitor center, tundra walk at inner visitor center. We also continued our shuttle bus to Wonder Lake where the mosquitoes were so thick you could barely breathe (!) and wished we'd just spent more time on the VC tundra where they were sparse. TMMV. You want to be on one of the day's first buses, to increase chances of the the Mountain being "out"! We did finally see it! If you want to do your own hikes, consult at outer visitor center and add extra day(s).

Anchorage: we did not spend any time in Anchorage, other than picking up our rental car and passing through on the way from Seward to Palmer. We did have very good lunches in brew-pubs on both traverses! Now I'm looking at our port-stop next year and there are a number of things TO do, but I wouldn't have wanted to give up the time in Palmer... Add day(s) for any of the things your research turns up here.

We stayed in little motel/hotels (a kitchenette in Seward and the one night on way from Palmer to Denali -- you could do this in one very long day), and B&Bs (outside Palmer and in Healy for Denali). I would recommend a motel/hotel in Palmer and the nearest lodge to the park road into Denali NP that I could afford, if I were doing it again esp. with time constraints. Make reservations wherever you choose to stay! Have a great time!

Thank you so much for taking the time to list all the info, I will add Palmer to my research as well as the activities/ dinning you listed

Yeah, you wouldn't believe it, but I typed it out twice! The first time I hit some link (darn glidepoint!) and lost it all!

I'm saving it to disk this time though!

Hello, so excited for my upcoming first cruise to Alaska 2018 and could use all the help I can get. I have done a lot of research but would like to hear your expert advice. We will disembark in Whittier and head to anchorage to rent a car, then off to Seward, then back to anchorage, talkeetina, Denali then back to anchorage for our flight home. I/we like hikes on a small scale,exploring the culture, and sceneries. My question

1- do we want to stay in Whittier on do the 26 glacier cruise? Then take a train to anchorage?

2- I keep reading about stops at portage glacier and Girdwood, what's the best way to explore them? Before or after anchorage or on our way back from Seward.

3- we are somehow flexible with time but would like to keep it between 7-10 days, so what would be your perfect itinerary?

Thank you in advance and looking forward to hearing from you.

You need to completely reconsider your routing.

You should definitely take the 26 glaciers cruise. You will get much closer to a number of glaciers than you ever thought about doing on the ship.

You are doing a lot of driving that you can avoid. First try to get a one way car rental from Whittier from Anchorage.If you can't do that I would take the train to Seward from Whittier and then enjoy Seward. Get a one way rental in Seward and stop at the wildlife center, Portage glacier and Girdwood on the way to Anchorage. Doing it in this order will save you about a day of driving. Portasge glacier is a nice short visit. Depending on how many of the trails you explore, it can take as little as two hours or as long as four. Girdwood is also a short stop. If you go to Alyeska for lunch it adds some time. You can easily go from Seward to Anchorage with all the stops you mention, plus a couple of stops along Turnagain Arm in a day.

From Girdwood go on to Anchorage stopping as desired and then head north either by train or rental car. You might enjoy the bird sanctuary just as you head into Anchorage.

If you don't go to Portage glacier or Girdwood you can take the train from Seward to Anchorage and avoid the one way rental.

On the Alaska board there is a poster "Budget Queen" She goes to Alaska a couple of times a year and will give you more detaisl. She avoids the train at all costs, and we prefer the train. Different things for different people.

Thank you so much. These are great point and advice. I will take a look at train cost and one way car rental in comparison to paying for 4 adult tickets. I love saving on the driving time too. I will look at the other board and see if I can get more pointer. Again many thanks

On a land trip flying in/out of Anchorage...

We stayed at Hatcher Pass Lodge overnight- rustic accommodations but one of our favorite stops:

http://www.hatcherpasslodge.com/accommodations/

On the other hand we splurged to stay in the heart of Denali by Wonder Lake at North Face Lodge:

http://campdenali.com/alaska-lodges/north-face-lodge

We did a lot of driving with a crazy routing that took us first to Seward for 2 nights, then to Whittier via the auto train where we & our rental car boarded an Alaska Marine Hwy vessel to Valdez, where we stayed the night before heading to Denali via the rugged but drivable Denali Hwy. After Denali & the Hatcher Pass it was back to the Kenai peninsula where we roosted for several nights and did day trips to Homer, DH did a day fishing trip and I went to Soldotna. Our accommodations there were at a golf course that we played in the midnight sun: http://www.birchridgegolf.com.

IMHO our land trip was more amazing than the r/t cruise from Seattle we took a decade ago.

Any recommendations for hotels in the following cities

Seward, Anchorage, Talkeetina and Heely?

Thank you in advance