Day 1: Anchorage
This is home base for travelers to Alaska and also its largest city where 40% of its population live. You can take excursions from Anchorage, but we recommend you move out and explore further to the great outdoors.
Highlights
- Explore downtown Anchorage and meet the locals, take photos, and check out the fun souvenirs (we bought a bunch of shirts).
- Visit Anchorage Market and Festival, Alaska’s largest open-air market, to buy unique souvenirs from local artisans.
- Eat at very popular and always packed Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria for their delicious and one-of-a-kind pizzas and home-brewed beers. It’s among the top five pizza restaurants in the US, according to TripAdvisor.
- Stay in My Place Hotel, a clean, comfortable, and reasonably priced hotel with very friendly staff.
Day 2: Anchorage-Talkeetna-Denali
You can take a cruise to visit Alaska. Or you can explore Alaska on land. Sure, you can do a few excursions when you do a cruise (you’ll end up with probably just three instead of several due to time constraints). But there is nothing like exploring the vastness and beauty of Alaska on land.
We drove a rental car from Anchorage for the five-hour drive to Denali. This allowed us to check out some wonderful stops along the way, be surprised by crossing grizzly bears and moose, and get awed by the sight of the majestic mountains of the Alaska Range.
Highlights
- Visit Mirror Lake along Glenn Highway on the way to Denali. It’s a beautiful reflecting lake where residents from Anchorage and nearby areas go for fishing, canoeing, and picnics.
- Visit Eklutna Lake, also on the way to Denali. It’s a scenic, winding road, which is a break from the straight and monotonous Glenn Highway. People hike and kayak here. And it’s a relaxing place to take in the lake and views of the mountains. And it was fun to see so many bear paw tracks!
- Explore Talkeetna, the charming and quaint small town of 800 people and the inspiration for the hit show “Northern Exposure”. It’s a great stop for lunch before heading off to Denali and it’s a popular base for a lot of flightseeing, mushing, mountain climbing, and other tours.
- Eat at Rochelle’s Ice Cream Stop on the way to or back from Eklutna. It’s certainly a breath of fresh air, with its colorful facade and yummy ice cream.
- Eat at Denali BrewPub in Talkeetna. We had fish ‘n’ chips, mac ‘n’ cheese, and root beer float.
- Stay in Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, the posh and cozy lodge and resort owned by Princess Cruises that boasts of lodges, restaurants, cafes, shops, and wonderful views.
