Who has been on an Alaska tour?

Question

Planning a land-sea Alaska tour in 2007. When is the best itme to go?

Answer 1

April - very few cruises then (maybe a few re-positioning trips), but also very few tourists in town. Still some snow, a lot of mud. Days in Anchorage are about 15 hours long. My favorite time to drive up the Alaskan Highway because there is no snow or ice and not yet any road construction or motorhomes so you make good time (and yet you can still see lots of great Northern Lights/Aurora).

May - Days are 17 hours long (more in Fairbanks, less in Juneau), mosquitos are starting to come out, but aren't bad yet. Just a few sport fisherman around (early King run), a nice time to be here. Often pretty stable weather.

June + July - Ridiculously long days - 19-21 hours plus twilight. Getting quite busy so hotels, museums, rafting, flightseeing, trails, campgrounds, etc are more crowded. Bugs are at their worst. We get a fair bit of summer rain. Sockeye salmon arrive and that is important to some (they're tasty).

August - still full blown tourist season, but starting to dry out, weatherwise. More forest fires usually and the smoke can cut down the views in Interior Alaska. Days back to 16 hours or so.

September, air is getting crisp, birch turn yellow and the fireweed and knik-knik turn red. Can be very pretty. Need a jacket for the cooler temps, but it knocks down the bugs. End of the Silver salmon run. 13 hours of daylight. Kids are back in school, fewer cruises to choose from, but far fewer toursits in town. Weather gets stable again, more clear days than in Jun-Jul-Aug. No snow, except maybe in the mountains - that comes in Oct or Nov.

We've increasingly been insisting people come up to visist us in May or September. Mostly because we're so busy in the summer, but also because those are months before and after the bulk of the tourists come. And, if you don't mind temps 55-65F, then the bugs are much less than in mid-summer.

Answer 2

I went on a 10 day cruise to Alaska from San Francisco to Juneau, Sitka, Skayway, and Victoria. We left on June 25. The thing that surprised me was how cold it was in the summer. Out of the 10 days, we probably saw the sun 3. It was mostly gray skies and some days it did rain. You saw very few people walking around on deck except on the 3 sunny days. It was windy. There were nice places to sit by a window and look outside....and I found a nice private little niche to read and watch the fabulous scenery.

The hightlight of the trip was taking a helicopter tour over the Mendenhall Glacier. It stopped and let us off. We hiked around the glacier for about an hour. It was a great experience.

We saw lots of Eagles and a few bears and lots of beautiful scenery.

Answer 3

I went in September 1999, and enjoyed it immensely. If you are female, be prepared to deal with outhouses, during the land portion of the trip. A bottle of hand sanitizer is recommended. As I told people it is a great place, and if I wasn't too old and too married, I'd have stayed there.

Answer 4

why go to a place that is so cold