Matt R Carter asked:
Let me start by telling you a short and relevant story. I am from Juneau, AK, born and raised. My wife and I were living there while she got her Master degree. This was an ideal time for my in-laws to come and visit because they could do it on the cheap by staying with us. My brother in-law flew across the country to come visit. He wanted to experience Alaska so I set him up to do what we do to pass the time. I took him fishing for Salmon, where we saw some Humpback Whales and Sea Lions, and caught some Silver Salmon. I dropped him off at the trail heads of some of the trails that the locals use to hike or mountain bike. I had a buddy of mine fly him out, in his float plane, to a glacier where they landed and walked around, saw some bear and all that good stuff. Mostly, I packed about a months worth of living in Juneau into about a weeks time. Luckily for him we also had a stretch of awesome weather which makes everything in Alaska better! Obviously he had and awesome time.
A few years later he decided to go on another trip to Alaska to do some river fishing. He spent thousands of dollars on his adventure. He stayed at a fishing resort where he got all of meals made for him and walked right down to the beach and fished at his leisure. The problem was that thousands of other people each summer book that exact same trip with the massive amount of fishing resorts that Alaska offers. We Alaskans call that experience “Combat Fishing” because you are literally packed in with every Tom, **** and Harry who wants to catch some salmon. The nice thing about this style of trip is that it requires very little planning on your part. You don’t have to think about food, or housing or bait ect. Although, he did catch more fish at the resort he told me after the trip that he spent over 10 times the money to go to that fishing resort and when compared to visiting me and he considered it a disaster.
It is always difficult when going to an unfamiliar location because you don’t know exactly what you should be doing to get the experience of a life time. Here is what I recommend.
1. Decide far ahead of time exactly what it is that you want to experience. Not visit but really experience. Remember that it is OK to just want to have visited something too!
2. Visit blogs and forums. There are literally thousands of sites that will give you insight into trips that others have experienced, and what they experienced.
3. Use local services and not big corporations. Locals depend on you so they will bend over backwards to give you the experience that you are looking for. Employees of larger corporations get paid regardless of your experience. Lots of large companies will ship in employees who don’t even know Alaska and will only tell you info that you could get off of their brochure because that is all that they know.
4. Call the businesses ahead of time. Talk to the owner of the Charter Boat or whatever and let them know exactly what it is that you want to experience. If they can’t meet your needs they will most likely know someone else who will.
5. Don’t be shy about your desires. If you want to swim with the spawning Salmon someone will be able to accommodate you so make sure that you let your contacts know the truth. Remember that this is trip is all about you so you don’t have to do what everyone else does.
6. Don’t be afraid to change your plans on the go. You may get to your destination and realize that you really want to go on a glacier hike and did not plan it in. Change your plans and do what you want.
There is nothing wrong with going on preplanned excursions. They are designed to pack a lot into a simple program and they are usually a pretty descent bargain. On the other hand it is likely that you will want to spend more time doing one thing than they allow for and less time doing another so be flexible! Have fun and enjoy your trip to the last frontier!
