Alaska: Week 1

 Arrival, Palmer, Matanuska

We arrived late PM, stayed in a crappy hotel in Anchorage, then woke up the next morning and did our “supply runs” to the grocery store, REI (bear spray), and Barnes and Noble (car activities for the kids, as we banned screens for the kids on this trip).

The view from the plane on the way into Anchroage, 11pm

Then we headed to Hatcher Pass, which is a popular mountain area about an hour outside of Anchorage, that features backcountry skiing, hiking, and an abandoned gold mine. We were hoping to pan for gold (which they offer in-season), but the visitor center was closed. So instead we explored the old gold mine and hiked around, which was super cool.

The kids inside the old railway at the Independence Gold Mine at Hatcher Pass

Sylvia at Hatcher Pass, overlooking the old mining buildings

We stayed in Palmer (right next to Sara Palin’s Wasilla), at the Valley Inn & 24/7 Cafe. And yeah, it has an all-hours diner right in it. Was fine.

The next morning, we headed to Matanuska Glacier for a tour. We chose this glacier to walk on because it’s accessible via the road, whereas all other glaciers on this trip would require flying in. It was awesome! Reminded us a lot of the Perito Moreno tour we did in Patagonia, except this time with kids, grandparents, and Auntie Cara. Highly recommended.

Matanuska Glacier

The whole family in a crevasse on Matanuska Glacier on our tour

Our glacier tour guide recommended a couple things for us to do: the Reindeer Farm in Palmer, and the Nordic Spa in Girdwood. So, that afternoon, after a run, we decided to check out the Reindeer Farm. This was actually fantastic and far exceeded expectations. We had great, clear views of Pioneer Mountain. The girls got to pet reindeer, hares, pigs, and we got to feed moose. Cara got bit by a pissy llama named Ulysses. We got fireweed lemonade. And we chatted with a local high schooler about what it was like never seeing the sun in the Winter.

Soraya drinking fireweed lemonade in a reindeer sleigh

Cara feeds a moose some willow branches

The Road to Denali

About 30% of visitors to Denali NP actually see Denali (the mountain). We had amazing, clear weather the day we were driving to the park, so we were hoping we’d get lucky.

When the mountain first came into view on the drive, I gasped. When we pointed it out to the kids, they didn’t believe it was a mountain. They thought it was clouds. It’s that big. It has presence like Rainier in Seattle, but feels more like one of those pictures of Annapurna or Ama Dablam or something, where you know the photo can’t possibly do justice to how huge that thing is.

Denali from ~100 miles away, through binoculars

So we stopped for tons of pictures, and then decided to have lunch in Talkeetna, which looked like a cute little town a little out of the way. And it was! We got salmon cake salad from a food truck, walked around town a bit, and then went to the beach, where there was, again, another amazing view of Denali. And there was also a woman with a box full of rabbits she was letting people pet, which the girls loved. (They asked if we could go back and see the rabbits a few days later).

Denali NP

If you’ve been to other National Parks in the lower 48, this is not like that. Denali NP is 9,000 square miles of wilderness, and there is one road through a little bit of it. You can drive your car on the first 15 miles of that road. If you want to go beyond that point, you have to take an official park bus, which you must book in advance.

Also, there are no trails. Well, actually there are two official trails at mile 15 that don’t really go anywhere, but none beyond that. The only way to hike in the park is to go onto the tundra and wander around. Cross-country (off trail) hiking is actually ENCOURAGED here, which is kind of a shock if you’ve been to a busy park like Yosemite, Kings Canyon, etc.. They see so little foot traffic at Denali, nobody is going to be messing up the wilderness by stomping down the tundra.

We had two days in the park.

The first day, we took the free bus (no advance booking required) out to mile 15, Savage River. Cara, Kristen, Soraya, and I hiked a few miles farther up the road, while Grandma, Papa, and Sylvia stayed at Savage River to do the hikes around there.

The goal for the 4 of us was to gain Primrose Ridge for an expansive view. The ridge runs for a few miles South of Savage River, so we were hoping to turn off the road and make a trail up it. Problem was, the brush on the Tundra for the entire 3 miles was very thick and high, like waist-to-head height. We met some people that had bushwhacked through it, and they said it was awful. So we hiked farther and farther along the road, hoping to find better access. Eventually, we came to a spot with significantly lower brush, and made our way up to a knoll from there. This was DEFINITELY the best way to get up to the ridge, if we had wanted to keep going. Map here:

Walking on the Tundra was really cool. In the summer, the top layer of permafrost melts out, but the surface plants stay in tact, so it’s kind of like walking on a trampoline. Very squishy. I really enjoyed tramping around in the tundra.

Kristen and Cara hiking up the tundra near Primrose

Kristen, Cara, and Soraya at the top of the low knoll near Primrose

Walking on the weird, spongy/springy melted permafrost tundra

Strava link for our tundra hike

Meanwhile, Sylvia, Grandma, and Papa had a great time hiking around Savage River:

Sylvia after a bit of rock scrambling at Savage River

Sylvia hanging out in the riverbed at Savage River

That night, we had overpriced Thai food (our hotel seemed to cater to cruise passengers, so our theory was that the food there was priced as if it were on a cruise).

The next day, we had booked a Green tour bus into the park. There are two options for buses that go past Mile 15: Green bus, which is a hop-on/hop-off transport bus you can take to wherever, or the Tan bus, which is a 6-7 hour tour with a naturalist. We thought the girls would lose their minds on the Tan bus, so we booked Green at noon.

Before the bus departed, we caught the Denali NP dogsled demonstration. The park maintains a large dog kennel, for rangers to take sleds into the park all winter. This was fun and the girls loved it, though I wished they’d have provided more information about how it all worked.

Denali NP working sled dogs ready to pull a wheeled sled for demonstration

Green bus turned out to be the correct call, since the girls were starting to lose their minds by the end. We did see a bunch of caribou on the way out, as well as some really cool land in the park. The place is just endless. The bus stopped at East Fork (end of the line this year) and we got out and played around on the tundra and in the river bed for a few hours, before catching the bus back to the hotel.

Caribou standing majestically on the ridge above East Fork, at the end of the bus line

A Green bus approaching Cara

On the way back, two backcountry rangers hopped on the bus, at the end of a multi-day backcountry patrol. They reminded me of Ranger Randy from The Last Season by Eric Blehm. I’ve begun to try and emulate the slow enjoyment of the wilderness that Randy embodied, no longer trying to race along trails, and instead trying to enjoy everything I see and hear. I even noticed the call of Randy’s favorite bird, the hermit thrush, at one point on the trip!

Also, Kristen and I went for a couple of really fantastic trail runs from our lodge, along the Three Lakes trail. That trail is great for running, but a bit buggy if you stop.

A quick shot from Three Lakes Trail during one of our runs

Strava link to our 3 lakes trail run

Thoughts on an Alaska Family Vacation

In June 2026, we did a 2-week family trip to Alaska, in celebration of Kristen's 40th birthday. Many friends have asked us for our thoughts, and tips regarding the trip:

• Cruise vs. Overland: after having been there and seeing the cruise passengers at some of the places we visited, I think this is a false choice. These are completely different vacations. If you think you’d enjoy a fully curated, week-long guided tour with a resort experience, do a cruise. If you want more freedom and spontaneity for exploration, do an overland tour. There is some overlap, but they’re fundamentally different vacations. We would actually consider doing a short cruise even after having done this trip.

• Light and Sleep: this was a far bigger factor than expected. We were so unprepared for what this would be like, we brought headlamps like idiots. The sun literally does not set. It does not get dark. Your body has no sense of what time it is, ever. You could be doing a mid-day hike, then look at your watch and it’s 9pm. You can book long tours that start in the afternoon and it doesn’t matter. The practical effect here is that you have no cues as to when it’s time to go to sleep. We ended up having to liberally use melatonin, and we all slept with masks. Many of the hotels we stayed in didn’t even have blackout curtains.

• Mosquitoes: we were terrified about this, but mosquitoes turned out to be a non-factor. We seemed to be in Alaska at the start of the hatch, so they weren’t that bad as they could be. But also, it’s cold there, so you’re wearing pants and a long-sleeve shirt all the time. So if you treat your clothes with permethrin, there is very little for a mosquito to bite. We supplemented with picaridin lotion when necessary.

• Car rental: this is insanely expensive. Also, you DO NOT NEED AN SUV. Yes, there are many OHV and rough dirt roads you can potentially drive on. But most car rental company insurance will not cover you if you drive on these roads. They have big signs saying this. You can rent a car that is covered on these roads from a specialty company, but who cares. A sedan or minivan would be fine if it saves money.

• Wildness: many parts of Alaska are the only place in the world we have been, besides Patagonia, that feels like it’s not for humans. Humans are temporary visitors in these places. Most of the national parks in the state don’t even have roads leading to them. Even in Denali, there’s one road that feels like it was grudgingly built so a few people could see a few miles of the park. The term here is “wild.” Everything is huge in scale. It’s like if you took the wildness and desolation of Patagonia, dropped it into the Pacific Northwest, and then multiplied by 10.

• Bear spray: you obviously need it, but it costs $50 for a new can at any store ($70 if you buy it at the park), and you can’t take it home. I wish we’d looked into a way to get spray from an outgoing vacationer beforehand, like on the facebook page Anchorage Bear Spray Exchange. We just left ours in the hotel room at the end of the trip. At one point, some other people offered us theirs for free.

• Hiking gear: you are going to encounter highly variable conditions. It'll be at times wet, muddy, you will walk across snow fields, or need to get across a river. We'd strongly suggest wearing waterproof boots/shoes, hiking poles (especially for snow and river crossing), and using gaiters. The gaiters were amazing for keeping snow and rocks out of our boots. Kristen and I had never used gaiters before, but now I'm not sure we'd ever hike without them. We'd also suggest bringing rain pants in addition to normal rain jackets (ponchos are not sufficient). The weather changes on a minute-to-minute basis, and you could be doing a hike in driving rain.

• Strongly suggest reading Michener’s Alaska before going, to get a sense of history and place. Many of the places we visited were in the book, and it helped contextualize what we were seeing. It’s also just a really good book.

• Every single day of this trip, we saw something amazing. There was not a down day, or a meh day.

We have had many questions about our itinerary and how we planned the trip. In general, trough all of our travels we learned that the best bet is: choose a few locations that seem good, book lodging, and then only book those things that require advance planning (e.g. tours that sell out). Here was our general trip layout:

You can see we booked areas generally, but only had 3x pre-planned events (Matanuska glacier tour, Denali NP bus tour, and Kenai Fjords cruise tour). Everything else we did was vaguely roughed out based on what seemed interesting in each area, but ultimately decided on a day-to-day basis.

We would not change the layout. It was correct for our experience.