TALKEETNA, Alaska — Jean Tyrell tested her footing as she stepped from the tiny bush plane and out into Alaska’s Ruth Amphitheater, a tabernacle of granite, snow and ice.
Dramatic spires pierced the powder-blue sky. The air was so crisp it tingled to draw a breath.
“You can’t put a price on this,” she said, leaning back to look at the summit of Mount McKinley 3 miles above us. “This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff.”
The 80-minute Hudson Air Taxi flight was a bargain at $325 a head.
While it celebrates its half-century as a state this year, Alaska might never be as cheap again.
A souring national economy and plummeting oil prices, which fund nearly 90 percent of the state’s government, has the travel industry in Alaska eager to attract tourists.
That means deep discounts in the Great Land.
“It’s safe to say there’s never been a more affordable time to come to Alaska,” said Kathy Dunn, spokeswoman for the Alaska Travel Industry Association.
In January, the association reported early bookings were down 30 percent from last year as the state launched an “emergency” marketing campaign and a website to plug bargains, .
In an op-ed article in the Feb. 8 Anchorage Daily News, travel association president Ron Peck said the state is braced for “a devastating loss of visitors this summer,” and “no doubt large and small businesses will attempt to attract visitors through dramatic price-cutting.”
The typical seven-day, inside-cabin cruise from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Alaska last summer cost about $1,000 a person. This year most cruise lines are offering fares for less than half that.
Celebrity Cruises and Holland America have rolled out seven-day Alaska cruises in May and June for as little as $449 a person, and Carnival Cruises is offering June trips as low as $439.
Hotel prices are likely be a matter of negotiation, as top lodgings face the prospects of empty rooms this season. Flights from Denver to Anchorage remain between $400 and $700, according to a check of leading travel-booking sites.
Cruises are the most popular passage to Alaska, but not the only one.
Jean and her husband, Stan, had driven their vintage Winnebago from their home outside Toledo, Ohio, a month earlier, bad economy and high gas prices be danged.
“We’ve planned this trip for years,” Stan said. “We were going.”
Roughly two out of three Alaska visitors were on their first trip there last year, a travel association survey indicated. Of 1.71 million visitors in 2008, about 1 million arrived by cruise ship, 600,000 by airplane and about 77,000 by road or ferry.
Sail north
Our seven-day Holland America cruise on the MS Volendam took us from Vancouver to Seward, with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway, and days at sea in the Misty Fjords and Glacier Bay.
Our 12-deck, 1,440-passenger ship was clean and comfortable, the entertainment was rich, the staff was eager to help, and the food was good and plenty.
Vancouver’s Pacific charm provided a nice bon voyage for 800 miles at sea. If you have few hours, visit Granville Island on a $3 open-air Aquabus ride across False Creek.
The Granville Island Public Market faces a spectacular big-city skyline hunched along a wide, silvery waterway. Live music on a bright Sunday morning was a relaxing start to the trip ahead.
We sailed all night and arrived to steady rain in the fishing village of Ketchikan, where clapboard shops and pastel homes cluster near the Tongass Narrows ship channel.
The jewel is Creek Street, a boardwalk along Ketchikan Creek, where miners, loggers and fishermen traded with outfitters, convened in saloons and visited bordellos a century ago. Authentic totem poles are everywhere, and a lumberjack show makes the place feel like a Jack London version of Dollywood.
The next morning we dropped anchor in Juneau, a city of steep hills, squawking ravens and government buildings. The state and city museums are worth the stroll and $5 admission each place. But this port, more than others, merited a day trip to the alpine wild by the floatplanes for hire near the docks.
At the Mendenhall Glacier, 12 miles north of Juneau, listen for the lonesome howls of the black wolf Romeo.
His mate, Juliet, was killed by a car near the visitors center in 2003, pregnant with four pups. She is stuffed and mounted inside the center, and Romeo has refused to move on.
The cruise northwest from Juneau features humpback whales and swift orca near the ship, harbor seals and Steller sea lions lounging on ice flows and channel markers, hearty sea birds in the stiff north wind, and occasionally mama bears and cubs along the shore.
The day in Glacier Bay National Park is unforgettable, even by Alaska standards. The cold water swallows up all light except cobalt and turquoise shades of blue. Glaciers that are miles wide slough off shards of ice the size of buildings with thunderous effect.
If the next port, Skagway, reminds you of Cripple Creek, Idaho Springs or Black Hawk, there’s a good reason.
Many of those who settled Skagway in 1898 had followed the gold rush fever from Colorado.
Skagway’s most famous frontiersman, con man Soapy Smith, had operated saloons in Denver and Creede before going north.
He was gunned down here in a famous incident dramatized in the dance hall musical “The Days of ’98 With Soapy Smith,” four times a day at the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge (thedaysof98show.eskagway.com).
“Skagway still looks and feels like a small town, like a lot of places in Colorado before the mega-resorts,” said former Mayor Tim Bourcey.
He should know. The 46-year-old grew up in Littleton.
Bourcey’s business, Packer Expeditions (packerexpeditions.com), is named after Colorado cannibal Alfred Packer, whose face is on the logo.
“We use it kind of as an inside joke, but we tell our clients at the end of the day, ‘Yeah, this expedition was named after a cannibal,’ ” he said.
Carlin “Buckwheat” Donahue, who once sold concessions at Mile High Stadium, is Skagway’s tourism director. He and Bourcey have used some home cookin’ to assign names to local destinations.
That’s why the Denver Trail through the Denver Valley leads to the Denver Glacier, which features a majestic 1,500-foot waterfall — Elway Falls.
Drive north
After docking in Seward, the drive north to Anchorage follows the Seward Highway, a federally designated All-American Road, the highest recognition for a route that is “a destination unto itself,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The road passes steep, green mountains, bogs where some 230 species of birds are known to gather and the Cook Inlet, where pods of white beluga whales dine on herring.
Anchorage is a modern city, with malls and bawdy nightclubs, yet cradled by wilderness.
Wildlife is a head-turn away: a bald eagle the size of a schnauzer soaring across your windshield view, a moose dining on grass along an airport highway, Dall sheep scaling a cliffside.
The George Parks Highway travels north past Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. It is a constant postcard view, with few towns of any size, but where the people are as colorful as the landscape,
At mile marker 238, Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn continues to amuse travelers, though Skinny, the dirty-joke- loving barkeep, does not.
When I was in last year, the 80- year-old local legend, Richard “Skinny Dick” Hiland, had recently died from a short illness.
He had been a fixture in this 7-Eleven-sized saloon, souvenir shop, burger joint and pool hall “halfway” between Fairbanks and Nenana.
Skinny’s sells caps, underwear, T-shirts and shot glasses that depict polar bears having sex, as well as condoms called Skinny Dick’s Slicks.
“Happy, happy,” Skinny would say when he lifted a glass for a toast, patrons recalled on a Wednesday afternoon. When his wife was hospitalized in Fairbanks with dementia, he drove there every day to feed her.
Skinny got his nickname because he was a slight man. He was injured as a child when he was trampled by a horse, which stunted his growth. He always said he wanted to be a jockey.
A day earlier I had hired that flight over Mount McKinley in Talkeetna in a shack next to Nagley’s General Store, a G-rated version of Skinny Dick’s one-stop shopping.
The place had the same homespun, if not familiar feel.
Residents in Talkeetna are quick to point out their part in inspiring the TV show “Northern Exposure.” The mostly dirt-road town of about 800 is little more than a clearing in the forest at the confluence of three rivers and a stop for the tourist train from Anchorage to Fairbanks.
A heavy-bearded Talkeetan named Harvey D. Phillips explained why such a no-frills place as Alaska is such a draw.
“It really is the people up here who are unique, more than anything,” he said as he groomed his mules, Dottie and Louise, who pull a covered wagon called the Talkeetna Taxi for $15 a head. “They’re people who for the most part wanted to get away from people when they moved up here, but then a lot of us make our money welcoming people in.
“I guess there’s a lot of enjoyment showing people something they’ve never seen before.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
Impressive Alaska
SIZE: 570,373 square miles, one- fifth the size of the continental U.S. and more than twice the size of Texas.
PEAKS: It has 17 of the U.S.’s 20 highest peaks, including Mount McKinley, which rises from near sea level to 20,320 feet, making it the tallest mountain in the world from base to peak.
GLACIERS: about 100,000, covering almost 5 percent of the state.
SNOW: 974.5 inches (81.2 feet) recorded at Thompson Pass, north of Valdez, in 1952-53.
TREES: The nation’s two largest national forests are in Alaska, the Tongass, in southeast Alaska includes, 16.8 million acres, and the Chugach, near Anchorage, has 4.8 million acres.
PARKS: 15 national parks, preserves and monuments, plus 3.2 million acres of state parklands.
EAGLES: more than 3,000 bald eagles, the largest concentration in the world.
LAKES: more than 3 million.
PIPELINE: The 800-mile Trans- Alaska Pipeline has moved more than 13 billion barrels of oil from the North Slope to the port of Valdez in Prince William Sound since 1977. At 5.5 mph, it takes less than six days to travel across the state.
VOLCANOES: 80 percent of all the active volcanoes in the United States.
BIG CATCH: Dutch Harbor/ Unalaska is the top-producing commercial fishing port in the nation.
BIG GAME: 12 species of big game, the most of any U.S. state, including moose, caribou, black bear, Dall sheep, musk ox, wolverine, brown bear, wolf, mountain goat, black-tailed deer and elk.
Source: Alaska Division of Tourism
Alaska Insider’s Guide
GET HERE: The coastal cities are best reached by ferry or cruise ship, though connecting daily flights to Ketchikan, Juneau and Fairbanks are available through Alaska Airlines for about $250 each way when booked in advance (alaskaair.com).
KETCHIKAN
SEE: The Totem Heritage Center has an awesome collection of 19th-century totem poles left behind in deserted Tlingit and Haida village in the wilds around Ketchikan (www.city.ketchikan totem.html; $5; 907-225-5900). The elevated wooden boardwalks along Creek Street, with salmon splashing and shorebirds preening below, is a step back into the roaring Gold Rush days, with old- timey businesses and Victorian cottages, including the preserved home of Big Dolly Arthur (local -22378173-dolly-s -house-museumgift-shop -ketchikan; $5; 907-225-6329).
STAY: The Cape Fox Lodge Hotel is owned by a native Alaskan corporation whose shareholders are descendants of the Tlingit, Saanya Kwaan people who once inhabited the village at the site. The lodge’s restaurant includes Alaskan fare, and the property boasts museum-quality native artifacts. The most impressive feature may be the ride up the mountain to get there — via a tramway that rises 130 feet above the town of Ketchikan and the Tongass Narrows. (capefoxlodge ; 907-225-8001.)
PLAY: A tour for every taste, from an up-close look at sea life and life on the water on the Bering Sea Crab Fishermen’s Tour (56degreesnorth.com, $149 for adults/$19 for kids, 3.5 hours, 360-642-4935), or taking in the town at their own pace in headphones provided by Adventure Audio Tours (adventureaudio , $18, 907-247-4322). You won’t want to miss the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show (lumberjackshows.com/alaska; $34 adults, $17.50 for children; 907-225-9050).
DINE: The Alaska Fish House (alaskafishhouse.com; 907-247- 4055) offers a walk-in, no-frills atmosphere, including free samples of smoked salmon while you make up your mind from a vast seafood menu. The best deal on the menu was the Bering Sea cod and seasoned chips for $8.25 or a bowl of salmon chowder and corn bread, $8.85.
SHOP: The Tongass Trading Co. (tongasstrading.com; 907-225- 5101) has had deep roots in local commerce since its opening in 1898 as a supply store for miners, fishermen, settlers and natives. Today, it also sells T-shirts and trinkets in addition to quality outdoor clothing and adventure supplies, jewelry, furniture and hatchets.
JUNEAU
SEE: The State Museum (museums.state.ak.us/asm/asm home.html; $5; 907-465-2901) is loaded with amazing artifacts, including whale guns, aboriginal prehistoric tools, insignia of the land’s Russian period and the desk on which Alaska was signed over to the United States. The six-story State Capitol (w3.legis .state.ak.us/docs/pdf/capitol_tour .pdf), built as a federal building in 1931, sits high on the steep hill overlooking town. Gov. Sarah Palin’s office is just a short jaunt up three flights of stairs, above the House and Senate chambers. The town has a small museum (juneau.org/parkrec/museum/; $3; 907-586-3572) that touts the city’s involvement in Alaska’s statehood push and its gold-mining past, even explaining why the local homeless shelter is called the Glory Hole.
STAY: If you can get in, Grandma’s Feather Bed (grandmas ; 888-781-5005) is a Victorian-style, farmhouse converted to a country inn that provides — what else — a feather bed in each room.
PLAY: Giant bald eagles soar along the highways over deep, lush bogs on the 13-mile ride from downtown Juneau to Mendenhall Glacier (www.fs.fed.us/ r10/tongass/districts/mendenhall /index.html; 907-789-0097). A half-dozen trails range from a quarter-mile stroll for pictures and viewing of massive glaciers to a 6-mile, five-hour hike that rises 1,300 feet in elevation but provides stunning views of forests filled with ancient conifers that were standing when Columbus discovered America.
HAVE A DRINK: Even teetotalers shouldn’t pass up The Red Dog
Saloon (reddogsaloon.com; 907-463-3658), a frontier bar with sawdust on the floor and mounted local wildlife and Alaska artifacts on the walls, including a pistol Wyatt Earp reportedly left behind on his way to Nome, where he and his brother operated a saloon in 1897. The saloon hosted “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1959, shortly after Alaska’s statehood.
SKAGWAY
SEE: White Pass & Yukon Railroad’s trip to the summit of White Pass (wpyr.com/index .html; 800-382-9229; $103 for adults, $51.50 for children; three hours) carries visitors along the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush route 2,865 feet to the top, past stunning glaciers, plunging valleys, the lush Tongass National Forest and crystal waterfalls.
VISIT: “Skagway’s most exclusive brothel,” The Red Onion (red ;, 907-983-2414), is a must-see. The food in this National Historic Building is good, $10 sandwiches with names like the Harlot Ham and Swiss, the Menage a Trois Club and the B.L.T. Betty. The atmosphere is 1890s saloon, with a Brothel Museum in the 10 upstairs “cribs,” where the saloon’s other profitable trade was once plied.
STAY: The Chilkoot Trail Outpost (chilkoottrailoutpost.com; 907-983-3799) is 7 miles outside of town with stunning views of Face Mountain and the rolling Dyea Valley, Long Bay and the ocean backwater of Lynn Fjord, the deepest and longest fiord in North America. The cabins are made of hand-peeled, locally cut Sitka spruce. Groups of 10 or more can arrange a storytelling and singing led by a local Tlingit tribal leader around a community campfire.
TRAVERSE: The Chilkoot Trail (nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/chil koottrail.htm; 907-983-9234) offers a challenge and reward for hardy hikers. The 33-mile trail through the Coast Mountains has been used by earlier tribes, Gold Rush stampeders and contemporary visitors to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (nps.gov/klgo). The often-difficult trail is accessible only by foot and can take five days. Hikers go from coastal rain forest to alpine tundra in just 16 miles, amid wildlife that ranges from seals to bears. The less physically fit can consider the Temsco Helicopter Tours, (temscoair.com; 907-983-2900), which carries tourists over jagged mountains and crystal-blue rivers of ice to a glacier landing where dog mushers await.
ANCHORAGE
DRIVE: The 130-mile Seward Highway (byways.org/explore/ byways/10390) from the sleepy tourist town on the coast to Alaska’s biggest city through the Chugach National Forest is full of surprises — moose, bears, beluga whales and bald eagles are common sights along the route.
STAY: Trophy Alaskan wildlife don the walls of the Lakeshore Motor Inn (lakeshoremotorinn ; 907-248-3485), and the friendly staff make this modern, comfortable hotel seem like a wilderness lodge. Free hot beverages and snacks are always available, as well as friendly cats who wander the hallways in search of visitors’ attention. The Motor Inn is just two minutes from the airport, and conveniently located near routes to downtown and out of town to the north and south.
BARGAIN HUNT: The Anchorage Market and Festival (anchor ) is flea-market heaven, with the exotic to the downright tacky at prices up for negotiation. Souvenir-hunters will want to stock up, with knives, furs, rocks, locally grown fruits and vegetables, caribou jerky and reindeer hot dogs. The fair operates in a large parking lot between C and E streets at the end of West Third Avenue. The fair and market is held each weekend from May 10 to Sept. 7., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
MUSH: Iditarod fans will definitely want to check out WildRide Sled Dog Rodeo (ididaride .htm; $19 adults, $9.50 for kids; 907-929-2822). The show is staged by the Seavey family, including 2004 Iditarod champ Mitch Seavey. It’s never clear where the comedy ends and the education begins, and an educational dog show gives a real sense of the famous 1,049-sled- dog race held annually from Seward to Nome. The show features 20 Iditarod sled dogs and four of the event’s mushers. Showtime is 4 p.m. each day May 24-June 8, and 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. from June 8-Sept. 1.
TALKEETNA
FLY: There are plenty of planes willing to take tourists up and around Mount McKinley, but Hudson Air Services (hudsonair ; $275; 907-733-2321) seems the best bet, with 60 years in business. Besides numerous loops around the summit, the pilot explains the geology, history and the path of mountain climbers, flying over base camps and, for an extra $75, landing on a glacier for ground pictures. The company also offers wildlife tours and other sightseeing trips.
HIKE: The stony shores of the rivers — Talkeetna, Chulitna and the Susitna — that converge on the edge of town provide field for rock hounds to pick from, as the stones tumble for miles in the glacier-fed waters. But don’t keep your eyes on the rocks too much, or you’re likely to miss loons, giant Canada geese, kingfishers, salmon, moose or bears — all with McKinley as a stunning backdrop. With the sun shining at midnight, it’s a summer walk you’re not likely to forget.
STAY AND EAT: The Swiss Alaskan Inn (swissalaska.com; 907- 733-2424) won’t be the swankiest joint you’ll ever stay in, but it certainly could be the friendliest. The Rauchenstein family is eager to make sure you’re comfortable and well-fed. Werner (he prefers “Vern”) moved to Alaska from Switzerland in 1965. The family’s restaurant is excellent and cheap, and the inn is near a babbling river, a pleasant hike through the forest to downtown, or a short jaunt down the dirt road to the cemetery, a rustic tourist attraction. The breakfast and dinner menus are cheap and delicious.
Fairbanks
STAY: The rooms at the Bridge- water Hotel (fountainheadhotels .htm; 907-456-3642) seem a little dated, but that’s quickly forgotten with a local artist’s painting of a moose peering in your room from the alley wall out your window. The hotel is just across First Avenue from the banks of the Chena River, and it is within easy walking distance of the town’s best parks and museums. The hotel’s staff is friendly and glad to give you a wakeup call if the northern lights make a rare summer appearance in the dwindling hours of darkness 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
SEE: The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline (alyeska-pipe.com/Default.asp) at perhaps its best vantage point 7 miles north of Fairbanks. A small park allows tourists to walk beneath the 48-inch pipe that links more than 800 miles of the line, from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean on the north to the Port of Valdez on the south where 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil is offloaded.
EAT LIKE A LOCAL: Ask around, and you’ll be directed to Felix’s Cookhouse (907-456-6602) restaurant in the local Best Western hotel on Cushman Street, the main drag from the Parks Highway to downtown Fairbanks. Local clubs hold weekly meetings, and local businessmen crowd in for breakfast and lunch for good reason. The steak and seafood portions are huge for less than $20. The good times don’t stop at the dinner plate — there seems to be no shortage of fun-loving locals imbibing in the Lost Creek Saloon, also at the hotel.
HO, HO, HO: Fifteen miles southeast of Fairbanks on Alaska 2, you’ll find a town called the North Pole (santaclaushouse.com /shopcontent.asp?type=visitsch). The town’s motto is “Where the Spirit of Christmas Lives Year-Round,” and you can’t miss it for the 42-foot statue of St. Nick at the famous Santa Claus House store with a herd of reindeer grazing out back (santaclaushouse.com), candy-cane light poles, green police cars and prominent streets such as Kris Kringle Drive. The community took the famous holiday name in the 1940s, in a failed attempt to attract toy manufacturers.Northern lights
October to April is the best time to see the famed northern lights. /media/videoGallery.aspx.
Joey Bunch
Cool things to do this summer
C’mon, take a free ride
Anyone turning 50 in 2009, just like the state, can get a free ride on the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage or Fairbanks on the Denali Star, the Coastal Classic along Cook Inlet from Anchorage to Seward or the Glacier Discovery from Whittier to Grandview, where no car can go. Details: , or 800-544-0552
Play ball! (At midnight!)
Take in a little baseball and tradition with the 104th Midnight Sun Game on June 21, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year, when the Fairbanks Goldpanners minor-league team takes on the Lake Erie Monarchs. Among those who have played in the game are Dave Winfield, Barry Bonds and Tom Seaver. The Baseball America almanac lists it as one of the 12 must-see events for every true baseball fan. goldpanners.com/MidnightSunGame /index.html
Watch your step
The 37th annual Talkeetna Historical Society’s Moose Droppings Festival celebrates the perpetual forest nuisance July 11-12 on the streets of this small town between Anchorage and Denali National Park. Besides parades and a crafts fair and — the namesake attraction — an odd lottery that involves dropping shellacked and numbered moose patties from a helicopter. talkeetnahistoricalsociety.org/moose -dropping-festival.php; 907-733-2487.
Get crabby
Join locals who bless the fleet and enjoy preseason fair at the Kodiak Crab Festival on May 21-25 at Emerald Isle. The event also includes a seafood cook-off, parade and carnival, as well as running, golfing, cycling and survival events. www.kodiak.org/crabfest.html; 907-486-5557.
The Summer Games
The World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, June 15-18 at Fairbanks Carlson Center, brings native Alaskans to compete in contests of “strength, endurance, balance and agility” that “display the preparedness one needed for survival” in the wild. In addition to athletic contests, the event includes dancing, storytelling and other audience-participation events. Details: ; 907-452-6646.
Live from Alaska
A common sight from the front desk of the Fairbanks News-Miner newspaper office is tourists dancing in a parking lot after calling their friends and telling them to see them in Alaska on the newspaper’s Arctic Cam. newsminer.com/arcticcam.
Source: Alaska Division of Tourism
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an editing error, a mountain near coastal Skagway, Alaska was incorrectly labelled Mount MKinley in a photo caption. It was not. Mount McKinley is in central Alaska.
