Just back from an amazing 13 days!!! Coral Southbound 7/16

[4olivers]

We are home, all recovering from jet lag and totally wishing we were still in Alaska!

 

A detailed review will come later but a few highlights and a big thank you to this forum or some helpful tips along the way!

 

We all 9 (ages 8-68) started our journey in Anchorage on July 12, staying one night there at the Captain Hook and having dinner at the glacier brewhouse, wonderful!

 

From there we did the next three days in the interior and were lucky enough to see Mount McKinley in all it's glory in full, three days in a row and the peak on the 4th day. :) we met people who were there on their third or fourth trip and were finally seeing Mount McKinley for the first time.

 

We did do 3 excursions on land, Chulitna River Raft excursion/ 5hrs took us to Talkeetna. ATV Excursion - HIGHLIGHT OF TRIP!! Natural History Tour / just OK but while we almost took the recommendations of many of you on here to book the longer trek into the park, we did not do that because we felt we would need the downtime on that afternoon and boy did we ever! We definitely underestimated how much our travel from the East Coast And hitting the ground running would affect us. Not to mention the fact that two of us in the group had a very difficult time unwinding and actually sleeping. It was simply surreal to see the daylight at midnight! I could not shut down to sleep the first three days so that was pretty rough.

 

We took the train from Denali to Whittier on Saturday 7/16 and THAT is another highlight!!! It was well beyond our expectations and the nine hour train ride was gorgeous every inch of the way. There were a couple of downsides to the train ride having nothing to do with Princess or Alasks and one was a very sad and unfortunate situation with a family in our car, this delayed us getting off in Whittier by about an hour and we started our journey heavy hearted and have kept this family on our minds ever since.

 

We had terrific weather only saw a little rain briefly two times the entire 13 days and will post more later. We did stick with doing two excursions per port and have no regrets at all!

 

A detailed report to come later!

Edited July 27, 2016 by 4olivers

[luvtwotrvl]

Excellent! Glad you had a wonderful time on your Alaskan trip. Looking forward to your review later on.

 

 

David

[zqvol]

You were lucky with the rain. We arrived in Anchorage on the 15th and it hasn't stopped raining, except for one day at Copper Center.

[eandj]

I can't wait to read more. Thanks for sharing. We leave August 9 for the same itinerary. Hoping by then the rainy weather moves along.

 

Is the Capt. Cook hotel a good location?

Edited July 28, 2016 by eandj