Before Leaving - Background and Preparations

The Beginning

It all started 3 years ago when my wife, who is an avid nature films watcher, said 'for my 50^th birthday, I want to see bears fishing for salmon in Alaska'. Challenge accepted! 

At first I thought this was a remote fantasy, reserved for extreme travelers and career wildlife photographers. But after some research I found out that such experience is actually approachable to the general crowd (barring some $$ and careful planning). From that point, it was no longer a question of 'if' but of 'how exactly'.

Research and Planning

I started to research Alaska forums (first and foremost in tripadvisor,com), read numerous trip reports, and studied itineraries offered by commercial tour operators. We soon came to understand that Alaska has much more to offer than just bears fishing. We also figured out that we will not be able to cover everything and will need to carefully plan for time, distance and budget. We agreed on a 2-weeks' time frame which was the most we would be able to afford, time- and budget-wise. I built an excel with multiple itinerary options and deliberated them back and forth.

From the start it was clear that our personal 'must do' list will also include South East Alaska (specifically, the Anan Creek Bear Observatory and Glacier Bay National Park). At an early stage we decided not to take a large-ship cruise – we tried it in the past in the Caribbean and thought it would not be the right way for us. We did seriously consider a small-ship cruise, but decided it would be too expensive – a week or so of small-ship cruising would have eaten up a budget that would otherwise buy us 2 weeks of a 'regular' trip.

Glacier Bay

Eventually we decided on an itinerary that would include our 'must do' on South East, South Central, and Interior. The first and most important piece in the puzzle was - where and when to see the bears. We contacted Silver Salmon Creek Lodge 18 months before the planned travel date, and based on their recommendation we locked a 2-night stay in mid-August. The rest of the itinerary was built around these dates.

We booked our international flights and rental car in November, and the internal Alaska flights in January. By January we also had most of the lodging locked, as well as most of the activities. In general, we made our own planning and bookings, either by the lodging/attractions web sites, by email, or (in rare cases) by phone. The only exception was Gustavus/Glacier Bay where we let our lodging arrange our activities for us. We didn't have a single issue with a reservation lost or not being honored.

Transportation, Lodging and Food

Once we decided to include SE destinations in our trip, it was clear we will need to either fly or sail between them. We checked out the ferry schedule for our dates but there were very few options and none of them fitted our plan. As a result we ordered our SE travel from Alaska Airlines. In general their service was excellent, though as we found out, although they use modern commercial jets, their schedule is not immune to weather problems! Careful planning is therefore recommended to allow for potential delays. In addition , about 10 weeks before our travel, they notified us about a flight cancellation, which forced out to reshuffle our plan a bit and drop our Juneau day out of the itinerary. Luckily our damage was minimal, though we did lose part of a 1-day car rental deposit, which we made without noticing the small print.

For our land-based part of the trip, we reserved our rental car through hertz.com and got very good rates and terms. Quote was ~$460 for 8 days of rental, including all insurances and taxes. The only extra we had to pay was second-driver supplement (which was annoying since in many places this in included). But we were still happy with the deal (I believe they were tourism rates, US-based rates seem to be much higher)

We reserved our lodging based on TripAdvisor and booking.com ratings and reviews. We didn't want to overspend on lodging, but wanted to be reasonably comfortable, so in most cases we went for mid-range B&Bs or simple hotels. The only exceptions were again in Gustavus and  of course in Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, where lodging came as part of an all inclusive package. Similarly, this was never intended to be a 'gourmet tour', so we didn't splurge on restaurants either, but had at least one hot meal a day in reasonable restaurants (again TripAdvisor reviews were extremely valuable). In general, we didn't have a bad meal in this trip, but no culinary heights either.

Photography (for those interested).

I'm a keen amateur photographer and spent a lot of thought on what equipment to pack for the trip. I ended up taking 2 SLR cameras (Canon 70D and an older 550D). I took most of my shots using Sigma 17-50 f/2.8 lens (for landscapes) and Tamron 70-300 f/4-5.6 (for wildlife). In general I was very happy with the results (I hope you will be, too!).

I decided against buying an expensive super-telephoto lens just for this trip. But for our days in Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, I pre-arranged renting a Canon 100-400 f/4-5.6L II, from one of their guides (ask the owners about it if you are interested). This was one of the better investments in the whole trip since the results I got with this lens were amazing. I had a tripod with me but almost didn't use it, except for SSCL where the guide offered me to use one of his sturdy tripods to carry the heavy telephoto lens.

Denali

My wife is not a photographer but for this trip I got here a compact super-zoom camera (Panasonic TZ70/SZ50) with an x30 zoom capability. This turned out be another excellent investment since she was able to get amazingly sharp and colorful shots, shooting in a fully automatic mode.