North to Alaska: Pre-departure, AKA: Let the Planning Begin!

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We did it! Mark and I have talked about wanting to cruise in Alaska for...ever? Yes, I think that’s about right. We have been so fortunate to travel extensively, at least through Europe, North America and some of Asia but neither of us has ever been to Alaska. When looking at what to do for vacation this summer, we found that we could trade some timeshare points for credit on a cruise. SOLD! We started this planning process back in March which, it turns out, is fairly late for planning a same-year Alaska cruise. We do not have a standing dinner reservation in the main dining room, for example. Having been on a Regent Seven Seas cruise two years ago, we looked to see if we could afford an all-inclusive trip this time around. Uh, no. Oceania wasn’t too bad but we had a set budget for what we wanted the cruise to be out of pocket and that wasn’t going to work. Next best bet was Celebrity. We had cruised on Celebrity (or X as the Cruising Elite call it) once before and it was a really nice line. Definitely less crazy than the aptly named Carnival, smaller ships and more of an adult focus than Royal Caribbean. (Okay, true confession. We have never cruised on Carnival but just not sure it would be our cup of tea. A friend of mine cruised on Carnival and she said it was basically a mid-20s drunk-fest. Uh, ya-yu-ye-uh-no.) We had to plan departure and gone time around our grandsons’ birthday parties which led us to choose the Celebrity Millenium departure out of Anchorage/Seward on July 27. Like I said, too late for dinner reservations but we did get an Aqua Class cabin. (I literally have no idea what that means but the travel agent was really excited so must be good.) Mark had always wanted to do a land and sea trip to Alaska, but we felt like we are pretty independent travelers and didn’t relish the idea of being herded around by a tour guide. That also meant I got to trip plan, one of my happiest places! And the process began.

The first question was, “Where and when do we arrive?” We have some dear friends who lived in Fairbanks for 16 winters, the way Alaskans count their number of years in the great north, which totally makes sense. (In fact, I am going to start saying we lived in North Dakota for 3 winters. Each year you survive that is a stripe on your sleeve, trust.) They encouraged us to start our trip in Fairbanks and then make our way down to Anchorage. They made a good case for this plan and I became a frequent flyer on the Fairbanks, AK Tripadvisor page. Hotel reservations were easy (Hampton Inn and Suites using Hilton points; Hampton Inn is the #1 hotel on Tripadvisor in Fairbanks. I don’t love Hampton Inns--mostly because I don’t like their breakfast, picky-picky--but it is the only Hilton game in town so make it so.) Then I started to waffle. Do we depart on the 20th or 21st? How long do we stay? What do we do? What are plane tickets like? The cruise ends in Vancouver; flights from Vancouver back to Richmond were cheap--$188 or something ridiculous like that. The flights to Fairbanks, however, not so much. The cheapest flight I could find was $579. Now we all know airline fares make no sense at all but really? Is Vancouver THAT much closer to Richmond than Fairbanks? Mark and I discussed and we decided to look into treating ourselves to first class. The fare difference was not that great so I booked that flight. We would come home from our trip in style IF we could actually get there in the first place. I started digging into this crazy fare debacle. It was going to take three planes. Are flights out of Richmond booking up? Nope. How about from stop one to stop two (usually Detroit or Chicago to Minneapolis or Seattle)? Nope, plenty of seats. How about to Fairbanks? DING DING DING DING DING! We have a winner. There were incredibly few seats on flights from anywhere to Fairbanks and, during my research, fares had gone up to over $700. Mark said, “Look and see what the difference is between coach and first class,” which I did and, again, it wasn’t that much so now we were going to travel in style the whole way. Can you believe it? I can’t.

I was still working on departure on July 20 or 21 and could not make up my mind so began looking into the second leg of our trip down to Denali National Park. The best way to do this from Fairbanks is to take the train but when I went to the Alaska Rail site, no seats were available. Then there was the question of where do we stay and how do we get around and car rentals in Denali were hard to find and expensive. I finally settled on Grayline Alaska which, miraculously, had train seats available on Monday, July 23rd, hotel rooms available for the nights of the 23rd and 24th and more train seats available to Anchorage on July 25th. (Yes, I know the reason Alaska Rail did not have seats on any trains and that the Denali Princess Lodge didn’t have rooms is that the tour companies and cruise ships had bought them all up. Sometimes you just gotta give.) With that firmed up, we decided to arrive on July 20th so we would have two full days in Fairbanks. We had the middle planned but what to do on either end? The planning continued.

In Anchorage, we decided to splurge and take a helicopter tour which will fly us over Prince William Sound, land on a glacier, take us on a sled dog ride, the whole works. Cool beans! That tour leaves out of Girdwood, Alaska which means nothing to me but I am sure we will learn. Made reservations at the Hilton Anchorage, decided against renting a car as there was a parking fee at the hotel and car rentals in Anchorage are crazy expensive, like $200 a day. Really, we’re trying to drive it for 48 hours, not own it! We figured since we only had 1 full day there, we could Uber or Lyft or something; we’d figure it out. Made train reservations for the morning of July 27th to get us from Anchorage to Seward. Now only Fairbanks was left.

We had our 16-winter friends over for dinner and they gave us great tips on what to see and do in Fairbanks. They highly recommended the Museum of Natural History and the University of Alaska--Fairbanks and also the Large Animal Research Something that begins with an S--Station? Site? Anyway, LARS, which is also located at the University of Alaska. They also highly recommended the Arctic Circle tour--fly up and drive the Dalton Highway back--and the Riverboat Discovery tour. They said when guests came to visit them, they would nearly insist that they take the Riverboat Discovery tour and even promised to reimburse them their tour fee if they were not completely satisfied. They said no one ever requested a refund. Well, that definitely gave me the marching orders! Arctic Circle tour--departures at 5:30 a.m. or 1 p.m. If we do the 1 p.m. departure we will have time to go to the Museum of Natural History in the morning. Done. Sunday we will go to church (our 16-winter friends served at that church for, uh, 16 winters) and then take the Riverboat Discovery tour in the afternoon. After traveling for 13+hours on Friday, albeit in first class, sniff, that’s a pretty full weekend but we may never be back in Alaska! We have to do it all!! Okay, not all as I doubt we’ll be able to fit in the Large Animal Research S. With these plans finalized, our DIY land tour was complete.

We have some friends in Anchorage who have lived in Alaska for probably 20 winters. When our plans solidified, I emailed them to see if they could meet for dinner the Wednesday or Thursday evenings that we would be in town. The next day I get a call from Alaska--our friends! They said, “Cancel your hotel reservations and stay with us. We can loan you a car and we’d love to have you.” Wow! Consider that done! And now we don’t have to try and figure out how to get to Girdwood. Score!

Now that the land tour was pretty nailed down, next step was shore excursions and Vancouver. Mark and I honeymooned in Victoria, BC so we had thought about getting off the ship in Vancouver and heading to that favorite city. But we have never been to Vancouver so opted, instead, to do a day trip to Victoria and spend the rest of the time in Vancouver itself. In the backward design way that educators think, I began with the end in mind (Vancouver) and worked back. Ship docks at some ridiculous time like 6:30 a.m. My experience with cruise lines is they start throwing people off the minute the gangplank makes a solid KLANK! Since we are staying in Vancouver we will undoubtedly be one of the last groups to leave but that will still be by 9 a.m., I would think. Even though the Millenium is not a huge ship, it still holds 2,000 passengers and that’s a lot of people to clean up after and prepare for; I get it. We are staying at the (wait for it) Hilton Vancouver where we can stash our bags as I am fairly certain they will not have a room ready for us at 9:30 in the morning. But one can hope, right? Next thing we thought we’d do is a food tour. We have taken food tours all over the world: Greenwich Village East and West, Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, Savannah, Rome, and Florence plus pub crawls (yes, plural) in Dublin. The great thing about most food tours is that they are walking tours of a specific neighborhood and they give you a real insight into how the culture of the city developed. I used to get so turned around in Greenwich Village until I took the food tour. Now if I can find my way to Joe’s Pizza or Rocco’s Bakery, I am golden. Found a food tour that left at 4:00 in the afternoon on our disembarkation day. That was perfect. Other than that, we’re going to do the hop-on, hop-off bus thing and play it by ear. After 2 full weeks of schedules schedules schedules, we might both just sleep the weekend away.

Next, it was time for excursions. I have found some great tips on Cruise Critics of places to go and things to do in ports all over the world. Mark and I took a full day eco-tour of Antigua that I am sure cannot be beaten. When we were in Jamaica with my whole family, we found a guy who had a 16 seat van and he took us all over that island, even visiting a Jamaican school. He was a native and was so excited to show us his country. We have had similar experiences in Cannes, Genoa, and Rome. Off to Cruise Critic I went. Found a thread called something like, “What not to miss in Alaska” and started there. The first post I read said do not miss the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad out of Skagway and then read several more that reiterated this. Celebrity offers this excursion in several different formats but a private company, Chilkoot Charters, and Tours seemed to have the most inclusive deal, and they take us on a small bus instead of a 45 seater. After looking at all of the options, sold. In Juneau, the majority of the people said go whale watching and Harv and Marv’s is superior. Again, they only have a maximum of 12 passengers on their boats. My sister, who cruised Alaska a number of years ago, said don’t bother going on a whale watching tour but Mark and I thought the information we would glean from the guide would be worth it. Harv and Marv in Juneau--done. In Ketchikan, Mark wanted to go snorkeling which is not my thing. He is a total water baby. I booked that for him and then found a Discovery Wildlife Tour and Food Tasting. Both of these were through Celebrity. Finally, in Icy Strait Point, we are doing an excursion called Alaska’s Wildest Kitchen which is fairly short (1.5 hours) which will be right up both of our allies because I love to cook and Mark loves to eat. At this point I put together a spreadsheet of Alaska, we’ll see if I gambled right.

All in all, it looks like we are ready to go. Alaska, here we come!

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