My wife is quite good at finding last minute travel deals so we are off to Alaska in June. We are spending four days in Ninilchik fishing June 18-20, but have a few days to kill June 14-17. We are thinking about heading up to Talkeetna for a few days, then heading to Seward before we arrive in Ninilchik, just doing some fishing and site seeing. Any must see sights or locations on the Kenai Peninsula or in the Talkeetna area? We are having some trouble finding affordable lodging with the short notice during the tourist season. Any recommendations for off the beaten path hotels or cabins?

Also, I wanted to go up with someone and fly around a bit as it's my first time in Alaska. Any leads for a good instructor in the Talkeetna area. You Alaska BCPer's interested in sightseeing in exchange for a full gas tank?

Thanks,

Matt

First-timer pilot in AK? Number one: take some time to visit Lake Hood and absorb the atmosphere. Drive around the lake and see more float planes than probably exist at any other spot on the planet.

Number 2: In Talkeetna, no matter what, do the Denali flight with either K2 or Talkeetna Air Taxi. Tell them you only want to go on the Beaver. Tell them you are a pilot and if nobody else specifically asks, you can ride right seat on the tour. Do the glacier landing. Don't miss this. It will be the highlight of your trip.

Number 3: put on your thick skin for salmon fishing in Ninilchick. They call it combat fishing for a reason.

Some cool, photogenic Russian Orthodox churches around Ninilchick.
If you are driving from Anchorage to Kenai around Turnagin Arm, keep your eyes peeled for pods of Beluga whales.

Other AK guys can give you specifics on what not to miss, but those first two are the ones I would hate to leave Alaska without.

YB

Since you mention Seward, there are some pretty nice DIY cabins called "Angel's Rest" on Lowell Point, just south of town. In Talkeetna, you might try "Talkeetna Cabins" belonging to Kevin Foster. Both have websites you can google.

Have a blast,

-DP

You know, I am always surprised at how little attention the Quartz Creek airport / Sunshine Cafe area gets. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful and easily accessible areas on the peninsula. Other than that, Seward is super prime during that time. Check out Exit Glacier if you have a chance. Travel by ground or air is awesome.

I would take you up if I was off during that time, but unfortunately I will be working all of your days off.

Matt

If you have an interest in the history of Talkeetna they have a great museum on the main drag (the only main street for that matter) they have a bunch of neat stuff including a room dedicated to Don Sheldon which i loved. The ranger station is also neat, lots of info on Denali. I also second the glacier flight. Simply awesome, been twice so far.
Seward is cool, they have a sea life center which is pretty neat. We went kayaking through the sound and loved that, saw tons of creatures. In Seward we rented a cabin called Lost Lake Cabin (something like that)

Thanks for all the great info! I set up our last night prior to departure at a hotel on Lake Hood so that should be awesome. I think I am getting our plans dialed in, definitively going to spend the money on the Denali Flight!

When you head down Turnagain Arm south out of Anchorage there is a bird viewing paradise at Potters Marsh Just on the edge of town, Keep a look out for the sheep on the rocks to your left as you drive farther towards Girdwood, (at Girdwood go on up and take the tram to the top of Alyeska ski area, Great little breakfast place in town, Sourdough something?). On your right if you time it right you might see a Bore Tide, interesting phenomena. Take your time headed down the rode as lots of interesting little stops along the road.
Have fun.
In Talkeetna about the middle of town the old airport is still in use.
GT

If you get to Fairbanks area let me know I will be happy to take you flying in the back country.

Ken

Suggestion: Try not to go too far to see things. Alaska is "huger" than you'll ever believe. For instance, it may be only about 130 nm from Talkeetna to Seward, but it's 240 road miles over wiggly roads that are often clogged with traffic, so that you can't begin to go as fast as you'd like. On a good day, it would take you maybe 4 1/2 hours to drive from Talkeetna to Seward, and on a bad day it could take all day. Not that there isn't a lot to see enroute, because there is. But it's truly a case of the trip, not the destination, that is worth while.

In the time I was stationed at Elmendorf, we spent literally every weekend traveling, either by motorhome or by car, and in the last 3 months there (after I passed my checkride) by airplane. We saw a lot of the area, extending to Homer, Kenai, Denali, Fairbanks, Valdez, Cordova--all over. I even got out on the Aleutian chain, clear to Shemya courtesy Uncle and a C-141. But we had 3 years, not 3 days to do it. There is truly so much to see that you can't begin to see it all, so my suggestion is focus on an area and stay within that area.

Cary

Thanks everyone for the good advice. It is looking we are going to follow Cary's advice and try to focus on just a few areas. Good excuse to come back to Alaska in the future. We are spending four days three nights now up in Talkeetna staying with Don Lee and the crew. Plan on only flying a few hours with him, but he was nice enough to give us pretty good rates even though I won't be doing one of his full instruction packages. That will give us plenty of time to check out the area. Then off to five days in Ninilchik for some fishing and sight seeing on the Peninsula. We will spend the night on Lake Hood prior to departing the following afternoon so I should be able to get my seaplane fix. Pretty excited having never been to Alaska.

Thanks to everyone's advice we had a great trip to Alaska. We ended up spending 12 days in mid-June. Even though it wasn't a "flying vacation" we tried our best to get some flying when we could. Though we really didn't get off the beaten path and see rural Alaska, it was definitively an experience and we can't wait to get back and see more of the state hopefully do some more flying.

Upon arriving in Anchorage we drove up to Talkeetna and spend four days staying with Don Lee and crew and Alaska Float and Skis. We did a lot of hiking and checked out the Denali area as much as we could. Talkeetna was pretty cool, except a little busy for our taste. The town strip was fun, along with some pretty neat flightseeing aircraft flying in and out of the Talkeetna Airport. I had a chance brush up on my floatplane skills with Valerie in a few of the area lakes. However the best part was flying the Ruth Glacier with Rick Reisman in their Pacer. A Pacer is slow, but it allowed us to spend a lot of time in the mountains. The pics hardly do the area justice.

Assorted glacier shots:








We kinda adopted Don Lee's dog Boomer.


Next we headed to Seward for a night, went on one of those wildlife cruised and then headed for Ninilchik. My wife found a groupon deal for four nights lodging with several days of fishing. Salmon fishing was shut down due to poor returns, but since we live on the Columbia River we weren't worried about no salmon. We spent one day trout fishing on the Kenai and then three days of halibut fishing our of Ninilchik. Fishing was great, no monster fish but plenty of chickens so we were happy. The folks in Ninilchik were awesome. The tractor launch at Deep Creek was pretty wild. Links to some cool tractor launch videos if you have never seen it before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MeVGBE0QTQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nT9sXg3Wsk

Success:


Our homestead in Ninilchik:


Dinner, less then two hours since it came out of the ocean:


While on one of the halibut charters we met an older couple from Homer. He had a C170 he keeps down there and offered to take us up since he doesn't fly as much as he used to. We went for a fun flight around Kachemak Bay, we dropped my wife off to shop in Homer and we did some more flying around the south Kenai Peninsula. I will post some pics from that flight soon as we got to see some critters. Going into a real FSS was fun, had a long discussion with the Flight Service Specialist about how screwed up the lower 48 FAA is.

We couldn't stay forever and headed back for a night in Anchorage before we flew home to PDX. Lake Hood and the Alaska Aviation Museum were amazing, pretty much plane porn to me. Dinner at the Mooses Tooth wasn't bad either. We actually saw more moose in Anchorage then the whole rest of our trip. Can't wait to be back, but I suppose that is easy to say since we weren't here in the winter and it was sunny our entire trip.

Very sweet shots!! gotta luv the country up here! congrats that Hali!

fern_hopper wrote: We spent one day trout fishing on the Kenai and then three days of halibut fishing our of Ninilchik. Fishing was great, no monster fish but plenty of chickens so we were happy. The folks in Ninilchik were awesome. The tractor launch at Deep Creek was pretty wild. Links to some cool tractor launch videos if you have never seen it before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MeVGBE0QTQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nT9sXg3Wsk

Can't wait to be back, but I suppose that is easy to say since we weren't here in the winter and it was sunny our entire trip.

Sounds/Looks like you had a great time...

If you get so excited you want to buy some property,
I'll make you a good deal on a 3.5 acre lot on the Ninilchik Airpark (NIN)
Hell, I'll make anybody a great deal on the lot!

http://www.airnav.com/airport/NIN

Mark

SkyTruck wrote:
Sounds/Looks like you had a great time...

If you get so excited you want to buy some property,
I'll make you a good deal on a 3.5 acre lot on the Ninilchik Airpark (NIN)
Hell, I'll make anybody a great deal on the lot!

http://www.airnav.com/airport/NIN

Mark

Didn't look like there was much going on at Ninilchik! We drove up there a few times and didn't see a soul. But I guess it would be close to top notch fishing though....