MCGEECNS

We will be taking a Gulf cruise out of Anchorage in June. Our 2 splurges for this trip will be a whale watch cruise and a flight seeing tour. Questions then are:
Whale watch in Juneau or afterwards to Kenai fjords?
Flight seeing to Denali NP from Anchorage or elsewhere?
We have several days post cruise to enjoy on our own. We want to overnight near Denali and spend a day on the bus. So should we take the train from Anchorage or can we fly (tour) and then land there? Logistics of this? Cost, time suitcases? We will be taking a train from port to Anchorage previously. Therefore because the Yukon Pass Rail seems to be the popular trip from Skagway, should we bypass this as we are already taking train trips and do something else there? Is this a good port for kayaking?
2 more activities we would enjoy if possible – bear watching in case we don’t see any in Denali
A dog sled camp tour? Any info on the Seavy camp? We don’t need a heli/glacier tour, we just want to see the dogs with some info about them.

Thanks, I know it’s a lot of questions, but we want to optimize our time and $ on this once in a lifetime trip.

spirobulldog

I'm confused when you say "gulf cruise" The Gulf of Mexico is what comes to my mind. Do you mean an inside passage cruise or what?

All of the things you mention are $$$ and all are worth doing.

Look at www.highadventureair.com--We did the bear viewing/floatplane/salmon fishing to Wolverine Creek.
You are not guaranteed of catching fish or seeing bears, but in my mind would be about impossible not to.

Do the Kenai Fjords "All Day" tour to the Glacier. Again, You are not guaranteed to see Whales, but are likely to.

http://www.alpineairalaska.com/ offers helicoter tours and we enjoyed their dogsledding. There are many places in Alaska that do Dogsledding on dirt and cars with wheels. While similar, this isn't the same as snow. It would be far less expensive and if you just wanting to see the dogs then would be fine. Don't expect to some Show Husky dogs. These are real working dogs and what I would describe as mutts(mainly husky with other breeds mixed in)The dogs love to run and get super excited when they know they are about to run.

My parents enjoyed the Glacier Landing on Denali. I haven't done that though.

We enjoyed the Train from Anchorage to Seward/Kenai Fjords

www.kayakak.com has good kayak tours of the bay. We just did the bay, but if it were to do over again, would probably do an overnight to the glacier instead of the larger ship(the Kenai Fjords tour).

sunbum1944

We enjoyed the Husky Homestead in Denali - interesting stories by a champion musher

http://www.huskyhomestead.com

We did a salmon bake/whale watch out of Juneau and it was fabulous. The whales were doing some "bubble net feeding" that day (youTube that to see what I mean) and it was an amazing experience.

We did a float plane trip from Ketchican- landed on a remote fiord , saw some remote country.
Not quite as dramatic as seeing the glaciers but we enjoyed

We did the Skagway train trip and I thought very interesting- more interesting than the train to Denali

china_cat

We did both, a whale watch out of Juneau, and the all-day Kenai cruise. We saw more whales, closer, in Juneau. And it was a relatively short cruise, you don't need to go very far to see the whales. There were so many of them...humpbacks and orca. We even saw a humpback breach from a distance.

But the Kenai Fjord cruise was so much more...more scenery, a lot of glaciers, puffins, whales, sea lions, eagles, otters, and all sorts of things.

So if you have to chose, I would probably take the Kenai Fjord cruise, just make sure you take a long one, that gets out of Resurrection Bay. But if you can do both, I don't think you would be sorry.

We also did a helicopter glacier landing out of Juneau. Boy was that great. I couldn't talk my husband into a float plane, but did convince him to try a helicopter and it was just one of the most awesome things. And walking around on the glacier was just amazing. Highly recommended!

MCGEECNS

Thanks for all your suggestions, The "Gulf" cruise is the one way Gulf of Alaska cruise as opposed to round-trip Inside Passage Spirobulldog. China cat, don't know if we can do 2 cruises and really want to see whales, seems like Juneau is a better bet for that. Which tour did you use? What about you Sunbum? Whic tour out of Juneau?

Thanks again, anyone out there flightsee to Denali??

kayd

I second what China -cat said about up-close whale viewing at Juneau and amazingly varied wildlife on the Kenai Fjords trip ( including a few whales but nowhere near the number in Juneau's Auck Bay). Both were wonderful.

We also took a flight with glacier landing in Denali. Just breathtaking. We used this company, out of their airfield just north of the Denali entrance
http://www.flydenali.com/denali-park-flightseeing.html

sunbum1944

Sorry - don't know the name of the whale watching trip we did as we booked it through the cruise ship- it was a combination salmon bake/whale watch

kayd

The whale watch trip we took in Juneau was with Orca, Captain Larry, booked from home several months in advance. We walked from the ship to their office, and from there a had 20- minute ride to Auke Bay on their bus.
http://www.orcaenterprises.com

janisj

You can do the inside passage without going round trip . . .

Gardyloo

Especially for those with time constraints, I think a flightseeing visit to Denali from Anchorage is a terrific investment. As you know, a land visit to Denali generally requires three days - one up, one sitting on the shuttle bus into the park, and a third to return to Anchorage (or continue to Fairbanks, whatever.)

While Denali Park is a national (international) treasure, the fact remains that there are many days when the mountain isn't visible (it creates its own weather.) And, while there's a good chance of seeing wildlife - some of it close, some of it distant - it's very unpredictable; the bears and caribou don't actually walk up to the park road and pose.

It's a matter of personal taste. It's a spectacular landscape even if the mountain isn't out, and a distant bear is better than no bear at all, I suppose. However the question arises, "What could I have done with the same three days?" and therein - in my view - lies the value of flightseeing.

First, if the weather's punk, do something else and try tomorrow. Second, in many, many hours of flying around Alaska in light planes, I can tell you with complete certainty that I've seen ten times the number of animals from the air than I have from the ground. The flying service pilots are so familiar with the areas that they know where to look, and you're not constrained by a bus's windows or what you can see from the road or a visitor's center. And third, the whole experience takes three hours and not three days, so you have your cake and can eat pie, too.

Denali flightseeing trips start either in Anchorage or Talkeetna. They're generally cheaper - sometimes $100 or so - from Talkeetna, since it's half the distance from the mountain as Anchorage. However you have to get to Talkeetna of course, and if the mountain's obscured there aren't many alternatives available to you.

This isn't the case in Anchorage. Take Rust's for example - http://www.flyrusts.com/ - one of the premier flying services in Anchorage. Rust's can take you to Denali, but if for whatever reason that's a washout, they can still take you over Prince William Sound and some of the glacier fields, or over the Chugach Mountains surrounding Anchorage, or across Cook Inlet to volcano country and bear viewing sites... more options.

How could you use the "extra" days released by flightseeing? I dunno - head to Seward for a Kenai Fjords cruise. Or drive to Valdez down the Richardson Highway, one of North America's most scenic roads. Or - and this gets my vote with no competition - hop an Alaska Airlines jet up to Kotzebue above the Arctic Circle. See the midnight sun, stick a toe in the Arctic Ocean, learn about a fascinating economy and way of life in an Inupiat Eskimo village. Alaska is more than moose and mountains, you know. Way, way more.

But in any event, you have extra time to play with, and no shortage of places to play.

Just my view, others may disagree.