Early September 2002

by Tim Larison, CLIA Master Cruise Counsellor (MCC)

In the late summer of 2002 I went on a Alaska Land tour with a travel agent group, and I had a great time! The tour was run by Princess Cruise Lines. Princess offers land tours as add-ons to its Alaska cruises (a combination cruise and land tour is called a "cruise tour"), or you can do a land tour only.

Day 1

I took an early flight from Denver to Seattle and arrived at 11:30 am. The first tour activity wasn't until 7 pm that night, and I was surprised Princess had a representative to meet me at the baggage claim area to direct me to the hotel shuttle bus. This attention to detail I found throughout the trip from the Princess representatives - they did a great job. The first night was at the Airport Doubletree Hotel - an OK hotel for an overnight stay but I wouldn't want to stay there for a week. The roar of the jets taking off could be heard throughout the night. The cable tv options were very limited, too. There were 20 travel agents on this trip, with many husband and wife teams taking the trip together. Our tour guide was an energetic young man named Darrin who had escorted many of these tours. Darrin was another Princess employee who was very good in his attention to detail and I would recommend him as a tour guide to anyone. 

Day 2

Today would be mostly a travel day - flying from Seattle to Fairbanks, Alaska. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6 am - requiring us to leave the hotel at 4:10 am! Our Alaska Air flight to Anchorage was long (3 hours 45 minutes) and uneventful. After that long flight the short flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks was a relief! (40 minutes) We landed in Fairbanks at 12:30 pm. Princess handled getting all of our bags and transferring us to the hotel. 

Our hotel the next two nights would be the Princess Riverside Lodge. This resort didn't look all that impressive from the outside, but inside it had the feel of Disney's Wilderness Lodge or Grand Californian - very nice! The resort overlooked the Chena river in the back. The hotel staff said that in the winter the river freezes - you can sometimes see dog sleds running on the river during the cold months. The locals also drive their cars on the icy river in winter. That seemed hard to believe this day, as the temperatures were pleasant (in the mid-60's) with few clouds in the sky. We were told we missed the rainy period of two weeks ago, and that Fairbanks actually gets less snow and precipitation than people would guess. It is drier than Phoenix, Arizona for example. 

One service the hotel provides is a "Northern Lights Wakeup Call". If you really want to see the Northern Lights, the front desk will call your room at 2 a.m. on a night when this phenomena is visible. They say you can see it clearly from the hotel parking lot. They also said that the Northern Lights are best viewed in the winter when it is cold and the sky is clear. I decided it was better to catch up on some of the sleep I lost the last two nights rather than try to see a summer version of the Northern Lights. Turns out that all the hotels we stayed at had this Northern Lights wakeup service (except in Anchorage and Seattle), and this first night was to be our only chance to see the Lights! Tip: if you want to see the Northern Lights put in for the wakeup call starting the first night. After you see it the first time you may decide not to do wakeup calls on subsequent nights, but if you skip the first night you might miss your only chance to see the lights like I did. 

After our many hours of travel we were free to do whatever we wanted to the rest of the day. The Alaska Natural History Museum at the nearby University of Alaska was a popular stop this afternoon with some in our group. Many of us decided to wait until tomorrow to venture out from the hotel. I had crab legs at the resort restaurant tonight and the food was very good. Overall, the Princess resort restaurants served good food throughout my entire trip. I retired early this evening to get a good rest for the two organized tours we would take on day 3. 

Day 3

The first tour we took was the Discovery Riverboat Tour. If you only have time for one tour in Fairbanks, this is the one I recommend! We cruised down the Chena River and had some great views of the surrounding countryside. There was also a display of an airplane taking off and landing on the banks of the river, a dog sled exhibition, and a native Indian woman showing how she prepares salmon and makes fur coats. The tour was a nice blend of scenery and educational talks. 

The second tour we took was of the Eldorado Gold Mine. I would rate this tour as "OK if you are in the area, but don't make a special trip to see it". If you are interested in geology or gold mining, then it would be of interest. After a demonstration of gold mining we all got to try our hand of panning for gold. Of course all of the dirt handed out had some gold in it, so that pleased many of the tour participants. At the end of the tour was a huge gift shop with lots of gold jewelry for sale. The staff there would weigh your gold, tell you how much it was worth, and offer to put it in a piece of gold jewelry for you. 

After the gold mine we stopped at the Alaska pipeline. I'm sure this was boring for many in our party, but I thought it was very interesting. We had a short talk here on how the pipeline was created - I thought the design was very creative. We only spent about 10 to 15 minutes at the pipeline compared to 30 to 40 minutes in that gold mine gift shop! After the pipeline we took a brief tour of downtown Fairbanks and returned to the hotel for the evening. This was to be the end of our two days in Fairbanks. 

Day 4

The next day we took an early morning train ride to Denali National Park - about a 4 hour ride. When we left for the train from the Princess Hotel Princess was again very organized - pickup up our bags for us and delivering us right to our railroad car. We walked off the bus and onto the train without even touching the pavement. Princess has its own rail cars, and we were seated on the upper part of our car. The rail car was very comfortable and the glass surrounding us allowed for good viewing of the countryside (see the picture link below for what the rail car looked like). We had breakfast on the train today (very good). We were fortunate that Fall had arrived early in Alaska, and we the gold and yellow colors of the Aspen shedding their leaves for the winter as we headed towards Denali National Park. This reminded me of the Aspen back home in the Colorado mountains. 

Tonight we stayed at the Princess Wilderness Lodge - another fine Princess resort. I had no complaints about any of the Princess resorts on our trip. In the mid-afternoon we took a 3 hour Natural History Tour of Denali Park. This tour went about 11 miles into the park. I would rate this tour as good for scenery but we didn't see much wildlife. A couple of people in our party took the much longer Tundra Wildlife Tour (about 6 hours) and they reported seeing lots of wildlife (bears, moose, reindeer, etc). The Tundra tour goes 60 miles into the park. If you came to Alaska to see wildlife, I would recommend the longer Tundra tour. 

Tonight we attended the Music of Denali Dinner Show - kind of an Alaska version of Disney's Hoop De Doo Revue. The young actors and actresses were very enthusiastic and had good singing voices. 

Day 5

We had some free time this morning to do an optional tour. I decided to take a jetboat tour - the Denali Wilderness Safari. The name implies that you may see alot of wildlife but on my boatride we didn't see much other than a caribou at the riverside. No bears. No Moose. The boatride did have some great views of the mountains, and we stopped at a mountain camp where a local trapper told us tales of his work. Overall I would rate this tour as good - it would have been better had we seen more wildlife. 

Many in my party went river rafting today and they reported having a good time. The best reports came from those taking the helicopter tour. "Experience of a lifetime!" said one member of our traveling party after he got off the helicopter.

After a morning of optional tours, we took a 3 hour trainride south into the park, and then a one hour busride to the Princess Mt McKinley Lodge. This resort had the most spectacular setting of any of the Princess resorts we stayed at, with a great view of the big mountain on the porch of the main building. We were very fortunate to see Mt McKinley on both of our days here. Our tour leader said that 80% of the people who stay at the resort never see the mountain because of cloud cover. 

Day 6

This morning I took the optional Talkeetna River Float trip. I had never been river rafting before and I thought this would be a good introduction. It turned out to be pretty tame (no rapids) and I'll be ready for something more exciting next time. There were good views of the mountains from the river. I would recommend the longer Chulitna River Rafting Adventure or one of the other boat tours over this one. The biggest raves from my tour mates, though, again came from those who took the helicopter tour. 

After my river trip, I had lunch and walked around the small town of Talkeetna - the town that the TV Series Northern Exposure is based on. Our guide said they actually filmed the first four episodes of the show in Talkeetna, then the production crew decided it was too cold and the rest of the series was filmed in Washington State. 

I walked to the train station (about 20 minutes out of town) and met up with the rest of our tour to catch a 4 pm train to Anchorage. The train ride again had some great scenery, and dinner in the dining car was excellent (I had prime rib). We arrived around 9 pm in Anchorage and we were informed we had to have our bags ready the next day at 3:15 am! Other than a quick bus tour of Anchorage when we left the train, I didn't get to see much of Anchorage. The Captain Cook Hotel we stayed at was in the middle of downtown and was very nice. The next morning we all had our bags ready at 3:15 am as instructed, and we had a smooth flight to Seattle.

Summary

Overall I had a great time on this trip and I would recommend that people consider the "cruise-tour" option people taking an Alaska cruise so that they can see some of the interior of Alaska like I did. Princess does an excellent job with their tours and I would recommend them. Other cruise lines offer land portions to their cruises, too, like Holland America and Royal Caribbean. I was also impressed with the variety of tours Princess offered at each of our stops. If you want to be really adventurous, there was a tour for you. If you wanted something more sedate, there were tours that would give you a taste of the natural scenery and the Alaska experience in the relative comfort of a bus or a boat. There was a tour desk at each of the Princess resorts where you could inquire about all the tours available. 

Tim Larison