If you got a do over would you choose to visit Alaska another way?

I ran the numbers on driving to AK and renting a vehicle in AK and now book the CruiseTour with the most 2 plus night stays I can find and arrange my own activities on the full days I have available. Car rental companies are picky about where you take their cars, especially on gravel roads. Besides, no private vehicles after mile 17 in Denali.

It isn't the money but the experience. Although I do cruise where it makes sense or where driving makes no sense, I generally feel that given the choice between a me drive land trip or a cruise, the land trip will always win.

I guess that I like to decide where I am going, how long I will stay there, and where I stop on the way over the cruise alternative.

Why you may ask do I post on CC. It is just that some places are inaccessible or not safe to do by land. For example, try driving to Antarctica or up the Amazon.

DON

DON

It isn't the money but the experience. Although I do cruise where it makes sense or where driving makes no sense, I generally feel that given the choice between a me drive land trip or a cruise, the land trip will always win.

 

I guess that I like to decide where I am going, how long I will stay there, and where I stop on the way over the cruise alternative.

 

Why you may ask do I post on CC. It is just that some places are inaccessible or not safe to do by land. For example, try driving to Antarctica or up the Amazon.

 

DON

 

DON

Does the amount of time you have for vacation play a part as to weather you do a cruise or land vacation or is it just the location of the vacation?

Does the amount of time you have for vacation play a part as to weather you do a cruise or land vacation or is it just the location of the vacation?

We are retired so time is not a major consideration. I am very happy doing 30 - 60 day driving trips although my wife tends to push back as the trip approaches 60 days.

Basically, we do cruises mainly where driving is not practical. Also, when I do a cruise I usually tack on a DIY land trip as part of the trip. For example, when we did a cruise from England to St. Petersburg recently we spend 3 weeks (not nearly enough) driving around England before the cruise and a week in London (also not nearly enough) post cruise.

We are doing a cruise and a riverboat trip in Spain and Portugal next year. I have 10 days between the 2 cruises, will arrive in Barcelona maybe 4 or 5 days pre-cruise, and spend the same amount of time in Lisbon post cruise.

We are not people who cruise for the cruising experience but to get to places that we want to visit.

DON

Have been to Alaska before and am going again and possibly again after that.

Virginia

Hoping we are off to a great start for our first Alaskan trip. We are doing 7 nights northbound out of Vancouver, then 6 nights Connoisseur tour, (so most meals are included and few tours). We are considering renting a car in Skagway to get away from that "toury" type thing, but not 100% sure. We will do ziplining in Juneau and walking the Mendenhall trails on our own. We will do horseback riding on the land part, maybe a float trip.

We are early 40's and have 5 boys ranging 5 to 16. So with college quickly approaching we are doing it for our 20th Anniversary, and know that we won't be back for quite sometime. Kids are staying home with the grandparents, they have school. This will also be the first time ever we are travelling without our kids.

I hope this is off to a good start!

We are retired so time is not a major consideration. I am very happy doing 30 - 60 day driving trips although my wife tends to push back as the trip approaches 60 days.

 

Basically, we do cruises mainly where driving is not practical. Also, when I do a cruise I usually tack on a DIY land trip as part of the trip. For example, when we did a cruise from England to St. Petersburg recently we spend 3 weeks (not nearly enough) driving around England before the cruise and a week in London (also not nearly enough) post cruise.

 

We are doing a cruise and a riverboat trip in Spain and Portugal next year. I have 10 days between the 2 cruises, will arrive in Barcelona maybe 4 or 5 days pre-cruise, and spend the same amount of time in Lisbon post cruise.

 

We are not people who cruise for the cruising experience but to get to places that we want to visit.

 

DON

I'm with your wife, 60 days of travel in a row would be too much for me as well. :) I would much rather split that up to 3 shorter and 2 longer trips myself. :D

I'm one of those " oh no it's ABC ( another bloody church types). Sounds like your travel has taken you to way more than that though.:).

I love hearing stories from people who really enjoy their retirement and I wish you many more years of travelling the world.:)

Hoping we are off to a great start for our first Alaskan trip. We are doing 7 nights northbound out of Vancouver, then 6 nights Connoisseur tour, (so most meals are included and few tours). We are considering renting a car in Skagway to get away from that "toury" type thing, but not 100% sure. We will do ziplining in Juneau and walking the Mendenhall trails on our own. We will do horseback riding on the land part, maybe a float trip.

 

We are early 40's and have 5 boys ranging 5 to 16. So with college quickly approaching we are doing it for our 20th Anniversary, and know that we won't be back for quite sometime. Kids are staying home with the grandparents, they have school. This will also be the first time ever we are travelling without our kids.

 

I hope this is off to a good start!

You had me at 20th anniversary and the 1st time travelling without your kids.:D sounds like a wonderful trip. Come back if you remember and let us know if you enjoyed Alaska this way and if you would recommend it to others who are planning their first trip to Alaska.:)

Have been to Alaska before and am going again and possibly again after that.

 

Virginia

Was your first trip a cruise? What about your second? I'm really interested to hear all about how people first toured Alaska and how that experience helped them plan their subsequent trips.:)

I'm with your wife, 60 days of travel in a row would be too much for me as well. :) I would much rather split that up to 3 shorter and 2 longer trips myself. :D

I'm one of those " oh no it's ABC ( another bloody church types). Sounds like your travel has taken you to way more than that though.:).

 

I love hearing stories from people who really enjoy their retirement and I wish you many more years of travelling the world.:)

What makes it enjoyable is that we put down roots for 3 - 4 days in many of the places that we visit. I agree that traveling for 60 days stopping at 60 different places would be unbearable. However, when you stay in a place for a few days or more, you get a real feel for a place. Sometimes even smaller towns are worth staying at for several days.

Also, we always stay at B&Bs so we call talk to the innkeeper about special places that only locals know about. As an example, when we were in Fairbanks for a while, our innkeeper told us about a fantastic blues bar that we would never have found on our own and she and a girlfriend even met us at the place and she volunteered to be the designated drive for the trip back to her place. Try getting that experience on a cruise or on one of those horrible sounding AK CruiseTours.

BTW - that is what I do not like about many cruises - one day at each port and sometimes not even a full day (dock at 9:00; depart at 3:00 which means a 2:15 on board for a total of 5 hours total to see the place). Why even bother to get off the ship. We are doing a Spain and Portugal cruise with Celebrity next fall where we have overnights in 3 of the ports that we stop at. That is one of the reason that we booked the cruise as opposed to just flying to Spain and Portugal and doing a land DIY tour.

DON

We did a southbound cruise a few years ago. We flew into anchorage and took a bus to Seward where we cruised to Van couver. We thought it would be a once in a lifetime trip. It was GREAT, but only did the cruise with stops at port cities. I booked us from the dock time to as late as possible, sometimes two excursions and then walks through the towns to explore. We were definately busy but we got so much in! Didn't use the ship for any entertainment as we always had early things to do. I think this time I wil not overbook us in ports and enjoy the ship a bit more, to relax some. Everything we did was great though, only one glacier walk was cancelled due to weather but we picked it up later.

Now, here we are planning another trip. It will be a retirement trip for my hubbie and a finished with chemo/radiation trip for me! Can't wait!

This time, we will cruise northbound from Vancouver to Whittier. We will explore Vancouver a couple days before. Then we are putting together a DIY land your after the cruise. We will spend a few days around anchorage I think, then take the train all the way to Fairbanks, hope this is good! We will rent a car in Fairbanks and drive it to Talkeetna and do Denali for three days, do chena springs and where ever else we look into. We will take a plane to barrows. I say polar plunge, but I'm sure it will be just sticking our toes in. We will be staying in Fairbanks several nights. Will get the arctic circle certificate, see the pipeline and see what all there is around there to visit. I've been collecting all kinds of infoe on this site. Need to look into places to stay and more things that really will be memorable to visit. Our land trip will be 7--9 days so total vacation time about 3 weeks.

 

BTW - that is what I do not like about many cruises - one day at each port and sometimes not even a full day (dock at 9:00; depart at 3:00 which means a 2:15 on board for a total of 5 hours total to see the place). Why even bother to get off the ship. We are doing a Spain and Portugal cruise with Celebrity next fall where we have overnights in 3 of the ports that we stop at. That is one of the reason that we booked the cruise as opposed to just flying to Spain and Portugal and doing a land DIY tour.

 

DON

I should add to my own post that we are getting into Barcelona about 10 days before the trip so that we can do parts of Spain. We have 10 days between the Celebrity cruise and a Douro River cruise where we can do more of Spain and parts of Portugal. We will also spend several days in Lisbon and environs after the Douro River Cruise.

So overall we will be gone from late in September to early in November for maybe 1 1/2 months including cruising and touring.

DON

We did a southbound cruise a few years ago. We flew into anchorage and took a bus to Seward where we cruised to Van couver. We thought it would be a once in a lifetime trip. It was GREAT, but only did the cruise with stops at port cities. I booked us from the dock time to as late as possible, sometimes two excursions and then walks through the towns to explore. We were definately busy but we got so much in! Didn't use the ship for any entertainment as we always had early things to do. I think this time I wil not overbook us in ports and enjoy the ship a bit more, to relax some. Everything we did was great though, only one glacier walk was cancelled due to weather but we picked it up later.

 

Now, here we are planning another trip. It will be a retirement trip for my hubbie and a finished with chemo/radiation trip for me! Can't wait!

 

This time, we will cruise northbound from Vancouver to Whittier. We will explore Vancouver a couple days before. Then we are putting together a DIY land your after the cruise. We will spend a few days around anchorage I think, then take the train all the way to Fairbanks, hope this is good! We will rent a car in Fairbanks and drive it to Talkeetna and do Denali for three days, do chena springs and where ever else we look into. We will take a plane to barrows. I say polar plunge, but I'm sure it will be just sticking our toes in. We will be staying in Fairbanks several nights. Will get the arctic circle certificate, see the pipeline and see what all there is around there to visit. I've been collecting all kinds of infoe on this site. Need to look into places to stay and more things that really will be memorable to visit. Our land trip will be 7--9 days so total vacation time about 3 weeks.

It sounds like you are going to have another once in a lifetime trip. :). What is an Arctic Circle Certificate I have never heard of such a thing?

We did a southbound cruise a few years ago. We flew into anchorage and took a bus to Seward where we cruised to Van couver. We thought it would be a once in a lifetime trip. It was GREAT, but only did the cruise with stops at port cities. I booked us from the dock time to as late as possible, sometimes two excursions and then walks through the towns to explore. We were definately busy but we got so much in! Didn't use the ship for any entertainment as we always had early things to do. I think this time I wil not overbook us in ports and enjoy the ship a bit more, to relax some. Everything we did was great though, only one glacier walk was cancelled due to weather but we picked it up later.

 

Now, here we are planning another trip. It will be a retirement trip for my hubbie and a finished with chemo/radiation trip for me! Can't wait!

 

This time, we will cruise northbound from Vancouver to Whittier. We will explore Vancouver a couple days before. Then we are putting together a DIY land your after the cruise. We will spend a few days around anchorage I think, then take the train all the way to Fairbanks, hope this is good! We will rent a car in Fairbanks and drive it to Talkeetna and do Denali for three days, do chena springs and where ever else we look into. We will take a plane to barrows. I say polar plunge, but I'm sure it will be just sticking our toes in. We will be staying in Fairbanks several nights. Will get the arctic circle certificate, see the pipeline and see what all there is around there to visit. I've been collecting all kinds of infoe on this site. Need to look into places to stay and more things that really will be memorable to visit. Our land trip will be 7--9 days so total vacation time about 3 weeks.

I recommend that you buy a copy of the Mile Post for your Alaskan land visit. It is loaded with maps, good information about things to do, and often provides interesting landmark information about things you pass along the highways. I believe it now also comes with a digital version, if that might also be useful! Years ago it also had coupons for small savings at some restaurants, etc.

We wish you a fantastic trip in the Great Land.

I recommend that you buy a copy of the Mile Post for your Alaskan land visit. It is loaded with maps, good information about things to do, and often provides interesting landmark information about things you pass along the highways. I believe it now also comes with a digital version, if that might also be useful! Years ago it also had coupons for small savings at some restaurants, etc.

 

We wish you a fantastic trip in the Great Land.

Would this be available at bookstores or only online? Thanks :)

Would this be available at bookstores or only online? Thanks :)

We have found it in the Alaska travel area in lots of bookstores. It can also be ordered on line at http://www.themilepost.com

Over the years we have purchased the book both ways.

We've done several inside passage cruises, one Princess cruise tour, and one mainland trip completely on our own. For the mainland trip, we flew into Achorage and rented a car. Made our way to Fairbanks and went up the Dalton Highway to Deadhorse in a van excursion. Flew back to Fairbanks in a small plane and went down to Denali for a couple of days. Then back to Anchorage and a day trip down to Whittier for a glacier cruise.

I loved the inside passage cruises. Really loved the cruisetour. But if I could only choose one of the three types of trips to do again, there's simply no contest. Hands down, it's the on-our-own trip up to mainland. Spectacular.

you can buy old editions of the Milepost on amazon for $6 - $8. I still use my 2007 edition.

Highways, towns, scenic viewpoints don't change, only vendors change; some businesses will go under and new ones will appear.

We have found it in the Alaska travel area in lots of bookstores. It can also be ordered on line at http://www.themilepost.com

 

Over the years we have purchased the book both ways.

Thank you. A friend is planning an Alaskan cruise/land vaca and I remembered reading that there was a good book for doing Alaska on your own. I will let her know.:)

I loved the inside passage cruises. Really loved the cruisetour. But if I could only choose one of the three types of trips to do again, there's simply no contest. Hands down, it's the on-our-own trip up to mainland. Spectacular.

We agree! We have done several Alaskan cruises (northbound, southbound, out of and back Seattle/Vancouver). However, if one really wants to see Alaska and learn about the psyche of Alaskans, nothing but a land tour of the Great Land will suffice. Drive the Alaskan highway or fly to get there; rent a vehicle and drive: Anchorage, Homer, Fairbanks, Prudhoe Bay, and more...