Question - you will only have a week total in Alaska? If so, you will really want to focus. You may want to do just Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula, although I think it would be painful to miss Denali. But I wasn't sure from your wording, maybe you meant you only had a week in the Kenai Peninsula.

Ok BostonGal, here's some things to consider. For one, one week is a short time but doable ... double check your arrival and departure times. You might be arriving in Anchorage early evening and departing after supper on a flight that doesn't get you into Boston until the next day. If you don't have tickets yet, double check how long your flights our. Our last trip was MHT via Chicago on United. We paid extra for a shorter flight. It would have been cheaper to add another stop which was in Denver. No thank you. We have not been to Denali but made it as far as the Talkeetna area. The drive north of Anchorage to Denali is long and not very scenic although it gets exciting when you first start to see the mountain. Anchorage sprawls to the north so you might feel you are driving thru suburbia until you get north of Wasilla. There are certainly some wonderful places like Hatcher Pass and Indpendence Mine north of Anchorage. Talkeetna is definitely a funky town, sort of old Alaska looking.
Anchorage itself is a big city with a spectacular backdrop of mountains. There's nice hiking, good restaurants and things to do. Certainly worth a visit.
But heading south of Anchorage the scenery is incredible all the way along the Turnagain Arm. You can stop in Girdwood, Portage, and other places on your way to Seward. You will see a lot of sea life on a Kenai Fjords cruise. Seward is a small town. Seward is only about 3 hours from Anchorage but you could easily spend most of the day getting there. I think there is more to see and do south of Anchorage in a short amount of time. I think you might end up with enough time in Anchorage on your first and last days since your priorities are sea kayaking and hiking.
Hope you have a great trip.

Hi BostonGal, I understand feeling overwhelmed--I felt the same way when in May of this year I found out my husband and I would be going for two weeks in June. That left me with approximately 4 weeks to plan. We did not go to Denali but rather stayed primarily in Anchorage for business (husband) and to visit friends living there. We had about a week for sightseeing on our own and chose to head South as far as Seward. The drive to Seward is spectacular and there is so much to see and do along the way. We spent two nights in Seward which for us was perfect. We spent a day in Girdwood for hiking at the Alyeska Resort; took the Phillips 26 glacier cruise out of Whittier; spent a day at Hatcher's Pass; and hiked one day to the top of Flattop. If you enjoy museums, I highly recommend the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. I am excited for you--Alaska is amazing and I cannot wait to go back! Have fun planning your trip!

Oh boy, so it sounds like we will have to be smart about our itinerary.. yes, we will in fact only have one week total, maybe 9 days, but I don't think we can do any longer than that this time around.

Thanks for the input so far, this is very helpful. I still have about 1/2 the book to read, so I'm sure I'll have more questions when I'm done.

Thanks again!

We did almost the same trip as AnnMarie. The only thing we aded was that we drove up to Talkeetna and took the flight around the summit of Mt. McKinley. On the way back we turned off the main hwy to go up to Hatchers Pass - beautiful1! I think a week is a nice amount of time to discover the above mentioned things in the area around and in Anchorage. We stayed 2 nights in Anchorage using the tour saver book for room and art/history museum, Native Cultural Center, etc. We stay at Alyska one night and on to Seward for 2 days. We also stayed in two differenct B&B's which were spotlessly clean and so much fun because we got the real lowdown on the area from the B&B owners. It is a beautiful place. Keep reading the posts and by the time you go you will feel you know the place - but you won't, words cannot discribe the beauty!

Be sure and check your return flight.
We were in Alaska in 2000 and returned after Labor day and at that time most flight only had one flight a day and this did not show on our return ticket.I just happen to call the airline to see if they were on time and found out that our scheduled 6 pm o'clock flight had changed to 11:30pm and was delayed until 1am. This was a mess as we had to call the people who were picking us up to change plans. I would encourage you to ask about this when you book your tickets.
I agree the Kenai Penn. is a lot better than Denali, it snowed when we were there and we could only do part of the tour, this was after we had been in Alaska/Yukon for 2 l/2 weeks and we were disappointed in Denali as we felt that we had seen just as great scenery as this,but the mountain was fantastic.
This was the greatest trip on our lifetime and would recommend it to anyone.