boulder-girl

More scenery from the drive through the park...

Time to clean the windows--AGAIN.

Moose!

My brother at one of the rest stops. These moose antlers are serious--they were really heavy.

We planned this trip last September after my mother mentioned that she'd always wanted to go to Alaska. It was the only state she had not been to yet. The trip included six of us--me & my husband, our 8yo son, my brother, my mom, and her friend.

We traveled with Un-Cruise on the Wilderness Adventurer--a 60-passenger expedition-style ship--on a cruise from Sitka to Juneau. (We did their "Northern Passages & Glacier Bay" itinerary, which we chose because everything I'd read raved about Glacier Bay.) Their trips don't stop at big ports, but instead anchor in various bays and inlets where we could hike, kayak, paddleboard, and even snorkel each day.

We also added on a land package to Denali at the beginning of the trip, so that's where I'll start with this report.

We flew in to Fairbanks on the first day, which is where the six of us joined up. We all live in different cities. (We thought we were meeting up in the Seattle airport where we all had layovers, but once we got there we discovered we were on two different flights that were supposed to leave at nearly the same time, except that ours got delayed two hours...bummer.) So when we landed in Fairbanks, it was just after midnight local time, and not even close to dark.

Un-Cruise met us and shuttled us to a hotel on the banks of the Chena River, which was lovely but we were hardly there at all, since we had to be up for a 7am departure to catch a train.

They took us by bus to where we caught the glass-domed train that would take us to Denali.

Loved it! There was a bar up on the top deck and a dining car below. They took us in groups to the tables in the dining car, since there were only enough to seat about half the total people at one time. The food was really good.

Off the back of the train was an open-air deck. It was pretty windy out there.

Then we got to the entrance to Denali National Park, where we got off the train and were to catch a bus to the Kantishna Roadhouse, all the way at the end of the 93-mile road into the park. The catch with the bus is that they can seat about 40 people on it, and they have to get the luggage for those 40 people on that same bus. They'd warned us ahead of time that we were limited to soft-sided luggage only, under 35lbs. (And for those of us traveling with Un-Cruise, they'd sent our extra luggage beyond that to Anchorage, to meet up with us at the end of the land portion.) You could easily see why as soon as you saw the space they had at the back of the bus to pile the luggage! But they managed to fit it all, even though not everyone got the memo about the soft-sided luggage. (At least one woman had two large hard-sided suitcases and was very loudly unhappy that she could not bring them both.)

The bus left the entrance at 1pm and was scheduled to arrive at Kantishna by 7:30, so they could get us unloaded and settled into our cabins before dinner was served at 8pm. The lodge is, of course, the only thing up there (well--there are a couple of lodges, but no restaurants or anything) so all your meals are in the lodge's dining hall at scheduled times.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because the drive through the park is one of the best parts.

The first animals we spotted were these mountain goats, way, way, way up on a hill.

Some caribou!

This is what it looked like inside the bus when we'd stop for a wildlife sighting.

The road ahead...

Ummm - WOW!! Amazing!

 

I am curious what company you went with.

We went with a company called Un-Cruise. Our ship was 60 passengers, 25 crew, and we spent the week kayaking, paddleboarding, and hiking around various spots in the northern part of the Inside Passage.

:) You were in Alaska while I was, but I was on the Jewel of the Seas, unfortunately. Wasn't it absolutely gorgeous weather???

The weather was incredible! Our guides kept telling us, "It's not usually like this!" We had sun every day but one. And even our one overcast day it didn't rain, it was just cloudy.

Beautiful pics. What ship were you on? I took a small ship expedition with National Geographic (40 passengers) in Southeast a few years ago. It was one of the best trips DH and I have ever taken. The ship left from Sitka and ended in Juneau. The highlights were not the ports--just the wilderness areas. Not to say that the big ship cruises aren't as good, just different ways to experience Southeast AK.

One more, for you. ;)

National Geographic's Sea Bird, June 13, just outside of Sitka

We were on Un-Cruise's Wilderness Adventurer on a trip from Sitka to Juneau. Here was our ship...photo taken from a paddleboard in Idaho Inlet and featuring my 8yo.

Hello! I hope this is ok to post here.

I was on a small expedition-style ship in Alaska in June, and I plan to write a review of that here soon, but first off I though you guys might be interested in a few pics I took of cruise ships that we passed as we were sailing.

First, in Glacier Bay, the Norwegian Pearl, passing very close to us at South Marble Island. This was taken on June 18.

Just a little bit later, also on June 18, in Glacier Bay, the Star Princess.

The next day we were still in Glacier Bay, and the Zaandam passed nearby. (June 19.)

And then finally, that evening, after we'd left Glacier Bay and were en route to Juneau, we were stopped watching a bunch of humpback whales in the water when the Coral Princess sailed by. (June 19)

Hope you guys like! :)

Were any of you on any of these ships we passed??

I can't wait to come back and post more details about my own trip soon. What an awesome place Alaska is.

Beautiful!

I spent three days in the park and never got to see the mountain. We even tried to do a flightseeing trip to fly up and over it, and we had four chances in the 3 days but the weather wasn't good enough to fly any of the times!

If you're computer-savvy, you may want to become familiar with the Terminal application (basically, a UNIX prompt) and the 'rsync' command. Rsync will copy from folder A to folder B, and only copy that which is missing on B when compared to A. It's a great way to make sure drive 2 has what drive 1 has. Basic usage is simple: "rsync -av /Path/To/Source/Pictures/Folder /Path/To/Destination/Pictures" - you can do a lot more with it, but that's the basic.

Thanks for the tip. :)

I use software called Photo Mechanic for ingesting and culling photos. It handles moving the files from my cards onto both drives and adding keywords as it ingests. I do usually double-check that both destination folders end up with the same number of images, b/c I'm paranoid, but it's very simple to use. It ingests whatever is new since the last ingest, so I don't have to figure out where that spot on the card is.

I'll add mine! I just recently came back from Alaska...in 10 days (land + cruise) I shot about 4000 images.

I use a Nikon 1 AW1 as my waterproof camera. It has the ability to shoot RAW, which was important to me. I haven't taken too many photos actually UNDER the water (although I got a few while snorkeling in Alaska last month) but I've used it several times kayaking and playing at the beach and have been very happy with the quality of the images.

I just bring a laptop, plus two portable hard drives. I bought a 13" MacBook Air specifically for this--it was the lightest powerful laptop I could find.

Every day or two while traveling, I download my cards onto both portable drives. I also shoot cameras with two card slots, and I try not to have to reuse a card on a trip, although sometimes that's not possible. I could put photos on the laptop hard drive, instead of a second portable, but I like the portable drives since that makes it so easy to transfer images to my desktop computer when I get home.

I like having the ability to do some processing when I'm traveling if I want, so the laptop is good for that, plus I like to keep some notes in a trip journal.

Ok...I am back from Alaska, and it was cool, but NO CONTEST: ANTARCTICA for sure wins. :)

These are the photo gloves I used in Antarctica: http://www.amazon.com/Freehands-Softshell-Photo-Gloves-Large/dp/B00GYLO2YO

They worked great...loved being able to have only my index finger and thumb actually exposed to the cold.

I went to Antarctica this past winter and am headed to Alaska next month (for the first time). So I can't compare yet but soon. :)

I am going this year, too! We are going in June with Un-Cruise. First time to Alaska, as well.

I just got back from a Quark trip to Antarctica, and there was an 8yo on our trip, and he did great. He was the only kid (no teenagers even), but he had a great attitude about all of it and did many of the hikes on land and even participated in the polar plunge.

Awesome...thank you both of you (woody73 and turtles06). Your descriptions are very helpful. There are so many choices to make, and it's hard to imagine how it's all going to come together from way up here on warm, dry land!

Never had a issue with the batteries. In fact never had to change a battery while on land.

 

Did have a body die on land. Fortunately it was the autofocus and managed to limp thru until I could get my backup body.

 

I used a dry bag to protect the camera gear. It was placed in a normal backpack. Neither ever got wet. Remember the issue on a wet landing is getting in and out of the zodiac -- so was always best to minimize anything in hands, arms or shoulders -- a backpack was ideal.

Thanks for the feedback. What caused your body to die? Was it weather-related?

Those of you who've gone, did any of you carry two bodies onto land at once?

Like Woody, I am bringing two bodies and was planning to bring them both with me on landings to keep me from having to change lenses outside. So maybe one with a wide-angle lens and one with a long one. I am having trouble figuring out, though, if that's just going to be too much hassle.

I'm not sure yet how I'm going to carry them...I'm thinking some sort of dry bag with backpack straps.

My plan so far is to bring four batteries for the DSLRs, so each body has one battery + one spare in case the cold kills the first one too quickly.

But I'd love to hear from you if you carried two bodies (and how) or if you tried it and found it to be too much of a pain.

Sounds like an awesome trip! I'm doing a Uncruise to Alaska next June...I am SO excited. I love reading reviews of their trips, but I've only found a few. Was glad to come across yours in my search today. :)

Thanks for the detailed review & photos! I am going to Alaska for the first time next summer so I've been doing a lot of reading...yours looked like an awesome trip!