Today is an important day for Alaskans… and probably for anyone that lives in the far north. Today is the winter solstice – the day with the fewest hours of daylight, and the day where the sun reaches its lowest high point in the sky. For the next six months, every day will have a little bit more daylight. The gains are modest at first, but within a few weeks, we’ll be measuring the gains in minutes per day, and those minutes add up over six months. For Alaskans, today is the day that things start to get better.

That is, if what you mean by things is, the seasons.

Alaskans are probably a little over-focused on the solstice, given that there is some lag between the least amount of daylight and the most amount of crappy weather. However, if the issue is just the darkness, then sun-watching is a legitimate Alaskan Winter activity.

Which brings me to my office. The building where I work is a long, narrow building which is oriented almost exactly north-south. There are offices on either side of a long, central hallway, and at the south end of the building there is a lounge or waiting area that has large, floor-to-ceiling windows. Between the lounge area and the hallway is a door.

Diagram of my office

At local noon every sunny day, the sun shines in the windows on the south side of the building. If it is in the late fall through winter, the sun is low in the sky and it shines against the north wall of the lounge, through the door, and down the hallway. The sun shines down the hall quite a ways, depending on the angle of the sun. Today, being the winter solstice, the sun shines down the hall as far as is possible. A few days either side of the solstice, the sun does not stream quite as far down the hall.

Diagram of how the sun streams down the hall of my office on the winter solstice.

Diagram of how the sun shines down the hall of my office a few days before and after the solstice.

This makes my office a solar and geophysical observatory! If I mark the position of the sun on various days, I can use it as a calendar. If I note the time that the sun is centered on the hallway, I can use it as a sundial. If measure the length of the sun stream on the winter solstice, I can calculate my latitude, and if I know the time, I can calculate my longitude!

I know… this isn’t particularly interesting to most people… not even Alaskans. But a lot of ancient geophysical observatories worked just like this.

It is like living in a modern Stonehenge!

Happy solstice, everyone! It gets better from here on in (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere).

(Here are some 1 PM pictures from my hallway)

This photo was taken at 12:56 PM December 21. Note that the sun shines almost directly down the hallway. This view is looking south. It is difficult to tell from this shot, but the sun is still not quite directly south in this picture.

This picture was taken at 1:00 PM December 21. Note that the stream of sunlight has now moved to the left (eastern) wall... meaning that it is now past local noon.

A little more than a week after the mushers leave Anchorage (and then Willow) on their way to Nome, the focus shifts to this western Alaskan town on the shores of Norton Sound. The lead mushers arrive in Nome on Tuesday, but race fans start arriving a day or two before.

Our guests generally head to Nome on Monday, but some like to go out on Sunday, and visit with friends and explore the town. In our packages, we arrange home stays for our guests. Hotel rooms for the Iditarod are booked years in advance, and it is almost impossible to book them in a time frame that works for our clients. So we work with a small group of locals in Nome who open their homes every year for our guests. We also suggest that our guests rent a car while in Nome – the town isn’t that large, but it isn’t terribly pedestrian-friendly in winter.

As the leading mushers approach the town, everyone heads down to line Front Street and greet the winning musher.

Most of our guests stay in Nome until Thursday morning, and then start catching flights back to Anchorage and then on to their homes from there.

We get a number of inquiries every year for people who want to head to Nome for the finish of the race… but in general, we can’t arrange lodging in Nome unless it is a part of a complete race package.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

The ultimate Iditarod adventure has you on the trail every day of the race. A “Chase the Race” Package starts in Anchorage, and follows the leaders along the trail from checkpoint to checkpoint.

If you decide to do a Chase the Race package, everything up through Rainy Pass is the same as the rest of our packages. From there, you spend your days traveling along the trail, flying to checkpoints or watching from the air.

An Iditarod musher leaves a remote checkpoint

One of the beauties of this kind of package is that there is a fair amount of improvisation that goes along with the trip. Part of that is the necessity to take weather conditions into account when traveling by plane. The rest is the ability for your pilot to make adjustments to your daily schedule to get you to where the action is.

Chase the Race packages aren’t for everyone – they are quite expensive, and guests should expect highly variable facilities along the way. But if you have a sense of adventure, and want to experience every mile of the race, this is the package for you.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about heading to Nome for the finish of the race!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

One of the things that makes the Iditarod such an interesting event is that most of the action occurs in the wilds of Alaska in the middle of winter. The central and western parts of the state are dotted with villages (and ghost town), but the only transportation between them is by air, river and seasonal trail. In the early part of the 20th century, it could take weeks for news and information to travel between villages, or between the villages and the outside world. Today, every village has modern telephone service, and many have high speed Internet.

This makes following the Iditarod quite a bit easier than it once was, but there is still nothing like being on the trail itself. Many of our guests get a taste of that by going to the Rainy Pass checkpoint the Monday after the start of the race, but further west and north, you really get to see a different world – one where, at least for a day or two, the world pays attention as the race passes through.

Every year we have guests that travel to some of the more remote checkpoints to watch the race. They thoroughly enjoy the experience, in part because they get to meet the locals and see frontier life as it exists in the 21st century. In even years, the Iditarod follows what is known as the “Northern Route”, and in odd years, the “Southern Route”.

2012 is a Northern Route year, and as such, many of our guests will be heading to Galena for the middle of the race. You will fly out to Galena on Thursday, March 8, and spend the night the nights of March 8 and 9. On March 10, you’ll depart from Galena, and then fly to Fairbanks and then to Anchorage.

In odd years, we send our guests to Grayling, on the southern route. We have also sent guests to McGrath, and it is possible to combine more than one checkpoint into your trip. It is also possible to combine one of the checkpoints with the dogsledding and northern lights adventures that we can arrange out of Fairbanks.

In future years we hope to be able to add Unalakleet to the towns that we can include during the middle of the race. Unalakleet is located on the coast, and is just a day or two from the finish of the race.

Tomorrow we will talk about the “Chase the Race” packages.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

After the mushers leave the Rainy Pass checkpoint on Monday, our guests find that they have almost a week before the mushers arrive in Nome at the finish of the Iditarod. Following the race from checkpoint to checkpoint is one option, but it requires a bit of an adventurer’s spirit and a fair amount of money (I will post a “Chase the Race” entry in a few days).

Most of our guests have at least a little adventurer in them, and for those that want to get a more hands-on experience with mushing can head to Fairbanks for a few days and learn to drive a dogsled.

Paws for Adventure is one of our longtime partners. Leslie has been taking guests mushing for almost fifteen years, and she offers a number of great options for those who want to experience the view from the back of a dogsled.

Photo courtesy Paws for Adventure

One of the more popular tours that Leslie offers is a three-day beginner’s tour. The first day you learn to handle the dogs and drive a dogsled at their mushing school site just outside Fairbanks. That evening you spend the night in Fairbanks. The second day you leave by dogsled out into the hills near Fairbanks, and spend the night on the trail. Some of these trips will be to a rustic cabin, and others will be a trail camp featuring Arctic Oven tents.

Spectacular northern lights displays are often visible from the Fairbanks area.

One of the reasons that this tour is so popular is that it is a great opportunity to see the northern lights. The Fairbanks area is one of the best spots in the world for viewing the northern lights. They are visible almost every clear and dark night. In addition, the weather in Fairbanks in March is particularly well-suited for northern lights viewing. March is a very clear and dry month in Fairbanks – and while that often means cold weather, the days are getting longer in March, so overnight temperatures are not quite as cold as they are in the middle of winter. This means that standing outside watching the northern lights is much more comfortable in March than it might be in January.

When you combine the good viewing conditions with a dogsled trip that takes you out into the wilderness where there are no city lights to interfere with northern lights viewing, there may not be a better opportunity to see them and be wowed by their spectacular beauty.

This adventure is one of our favorites… and we have even had a number of honeymoons and weddings that have included this trip. The weddings were performed just before midnight, with the northern lights ablaze overhead.

If you’re not feeling quite so adventurous, Leslie also offers shorter excursions, including just the mushing school (a half-to three quarters day experience), a dinner and aurora tour, and a one-hour dog sled ride. If you’re looking for a little more adventure, there are four, five and six day trips available.

Fairbanks also offers a number of other activities and attractions. In March, the World Ice Art Championships are held in Fairbanks. Ice artists come from all over the world to create spectacular ice carvings made from crystal clear blocks of ice. Sculptures range from the size you might see as a centerpiece, all the way to dozens of feet tall, made of multiple blocks of ice. At the beginning of the month, the artists are on-site creating the sculptures, so it is a great opportunity to watch a block of ice transformed into a spectacular form.

If you’re looking for a little relaxation while you’re in Fairbanks, you can make the easy sixty-mile drive to Chena Hot Springs. The hot springs offers an indoor pool, as well as an outdoor rock pool. I can tell you from experience that there is nothing quite as exhilarating as sitting in the rock pool with the northern lights overhead.

There is plenty to keep you busy in Fairbanks in March, and this side trip is a great way to spend a few days before you continue on with your Iditarod adventure. One of the beauties of this particular choice is that you can combine it with some other options, such as visiting one of the middle of the race checkpoints.

My next post will talk about hitting the trail.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

Once the Iditarod mushers leave Rainy Pass and head across the Alaska Range, following the race firsthand becomes a bit of a challenge. None of the remaining checkpoints are on the road system, so the only access is by air. Most of the checkpoints are served by regular air service of some sort, but in many cases, it isn’t very practical (or even possible) to reach some of the smaller checkpoints using scheduled air service during the race.

When our guests do head out onto the trail, we usually send them out to a location that is several days into the race. The Iditarod changes its route every year, alternating between a southern route and a northern route. In odd-numbered years, the best choice is Grayling, where three checkpoints are fairly close together and accessible by snowmachine, and there is excellent lodging and hospitality to be found. In even-numbered years, the choice is usually Galena.

It is also possible to do a “Chase the Race” package – where you fly to many of the checkpoints by air. This is definitely for the hard-core Iditarod fan, and because you’re in an airplane every day, the cost is quite high.

Some guests choose not to head out to the middle of the race checkpoints, and instead decide to spend the next week exploring other parts of Alaska. This is a great time of year to view the northern lights, do a dogsledding adventure (where you learn to drive a sled and do an overnight on the trail), or perhaps head to the Kenai Peninsula and enjoy the view on the ocean.

Our subsequent posts will dive into each of these possibilities… and also the option of combining them together!

• Iditarod 2012 – Dogsleds and Northern Lights
• Iditarod 2012: Visiting the Checkpoints
• Iditarod 2012: Chase the Race

View of an Iditarod musher from the air.

The Monday after the start of the Iditarod – this year, March 5 – most of our guests will start the day in Talkeetna. If you’ve never been to Talkeetna, it is one of our most favorite places in Alaska. The town is located at the confluence of the Susitna, Talkeetna and Chulitna rivers, and is known as the jumping-off point for mountain climbers who are headed to the Alaska Range to climb Mt. McKinley (and other massive peaks in the area). Climbers get to the mountains by air taxi, so Talkeetna airport is a rather busy place twelve months of the year.

Our guests will start the day pretty early, and head down to the airport, where they will head out to the checkpoints in the foothills of the Alaska Range. We try to get out guests to Rainy Pass checkpoint, which is the last checkpoint before the Alaska Range… but with the pace of the race and the weather, you may end up at one of the other checkpoints, such as Skwentna. The goal is to get there as the leaders pass through, and since this is less than 24 hours after the restart of the race, the mushers are still quite close together, but the fastest teams have moved to the front of the pack.

A view of the Rainy Pass checkpoint from the air taxi.

One of the big advantages of heading out to the more remote checkpoints is that unlike the experience in Anchorage and Willow, there are few spectators on the trail, so this is the Iditarod’s version of court-side seats and locker room passes all rolled into one. Our guests will have the opportunity to get fantastic photos and experience life on the trail firsthand. In fact, the photos in this post were all taken by one of our guests… so these are an accurate representation of what you can expect to see and experience along the way.

There is a lot of strategy and gamesmanship that goes on during the race, and visiting the checkpoints is a great way to see some of that going on firsthand. Weather, trail conditions and competition affect the decisions mushers make on the trail, such as whether to take a break at a checkpoint, or to pass on through. Later in the race there are mandatory layovers. Some are fixed, and others are at the musher’s discretion, so deciding when to take your mandatory layover could be a matter of luck, or a matter of strategy.

Mushers, vets, spectators, locals, and of course, the dogs doing their thing at the Rainy Pass checkpoint.

Our guests will spend about a half day on the trail. The pilot of your plane will guide you through the various checkpoints, with the goal of getting you to the front of the pack as they race through.

In the afternoon you’ll return by air taxi to Talkeetna. Depending on how we have arranged your package, some guests will overnight again in Talkeetna, while others will depart in the evening for either Anchorage or Fairbanks.

Evening in Talkeetna - The Roadhouse.

Our next post will talk about the middle portion of the race, and some of the various activities and destinations that we include in our packages.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

An Iditarod musher heads down the trail on Willow Lake at the Iditarod Restart.

On Sunday, the action shifts to the Willow Community Center and Willow Lake, where the race starts for real. In many respects, the scene is very similar at the restart to what you find at the start in Anchorage. However, restart Sunday has a much more Alaskan feel to it. Airplanes come and go off the lake ice, and there are dozens of people riding around on snowmachines (Alaskan for ‘snowmobile’).

Unlike at the ceremonial start on Saturday, the chute area is not as accessible as on the streets of Fourth Avenue, so this isn’t as good a place to meet the mushers or to get photos of the pre-race preparations.  However, you can get quite close to the trail, and there are great opportunities to see the mushers and to get photographs as they start off for Nome.

The first musher departs from Willow at 2 PM, and they continue every two minutes until everyone has left. Most of our guests arrive in Willow well before that – there is plenty of parking, but you may have to walk a bit to reach the Willow Community Center.  Inside the Community Center there are craft booths and food concessions. The center is a great place to warm up, since the lake is rather open, and it can be cold and windy.

We suggest that our guests get on the road to Willow between 9 and 10 AM. This gives you the opportunity to grab a cup of coffee or a nice breakfast, and still arrive in Willow in plenty of time. Plan to walk a bit today, and plan for moderately deep snow if you head out onto the lake. Some areas will be plowed clear and walking will be easy, but if you walk down the trail a bit, the snow on the lake surface might be deep. In any case, wear warm clothing, and warm boots!

After them mushers head off to Nome, most of our guests will continue north to the town of Talkeetna to spend the night. The following day, many guests will hop on a bush plane and head out to the foothills of the Alaska Range to visit the checkpoints at Skwentna or Rainy Pass.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

The Iditarod is a bit unusual in that the start of the race on Saturday is a ceremonial start. The reason is that there is no safe or practical way for mushers to traverse Knik arm, the Knik River and the Matanuska River. So the pageantry of the race start is held Saturday in Anchorage, but the real race doesn’t get rolling until Sunday afternoon in Willow.

Iditarod musher Dee Dee Jonrowe takes a moment to sign autographs for fans in the chute.

That doesn’t bother Alaskans, and it is actually great for visitors. Thousands of people come to downtown Alaska and line the sidewalks of Fourth Avenue for the ceremonial start. The starting line is at 4th and D, and the area to the st of the starting line is called “the chute”. This is where the mushers park their trucks, harness their dogs, and get ready for the race. While it is certainly fun to watch the mushers head down the trail, the real action is back in the chute, where you can get up close and personal with the mushers and their dogs.

If you have a favorite musher, and you didn’t meet them at the banquet, this is a great place to get a photo and shake their hand – provided you get there early!

The first musher heads down 4th Avenue at 10 AM, with subsequent teams starting every two minutes. The starting order is decided in advance, with the first starters at the far end of the chute, and the last starters in the front. You’ll want to get downtown early – perhaps as early as 8 AM, if you want to see the initial preparations of some of the early starters.

One strategy that some guests choose is to get downtown early, meet the mushers, get some photos, and then stake out a spot along the Anchorage portion of the trail. The race starts downtown, but winds its way throughout the parks and greenbelts of town, and ends at Campbell Airstrip. There are lots of great viewing locations around town, and you can have many of them to yourself.

Iditarod musher heads down Fourth Avenue at the ceremonial start

Most of the activities are over by about 2 PM… and this is good for both the mushers and for guests. Sunday at 2 PM the race starts for real, and it is nice to get a good meal, a good night’s sleep, and then head off to Willow on Sunday!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

When we do an Iditarod package for our guests, we usually start the package on the Wednesday or Thursday before the actual start of the race. The race starts on the first Saturday in March, which is on March 3 in 2012… So most of our guests will be arriving in Anchorage sometime on February 29th or March 1 (yes, 2012 is a leap year!).

Our main reason for having people come so early is to avoid the unfortunate event of a flight delay. For example, if someone were planning to arrive in Anchorage on the Friday before the race starts, and there was some weather or equipment delay along the way, almost certainly he or she would miss the start of the race on Saturday morning.

Midway Rides at the Fur Rondy and Iditarod celebration

The days immediately before the start of the race are part of an annual winter celebration here in Anchorage known as the Fur Rondy. The celebration lasts two weeks, and includes balls, carnivals, fireworks, and dog racing. The Fur Rondy dog races are the week before the Iditarod. If you’re looking for an extended Alaskan vacation, this is a fantastic time to visit – Come for the Rondy, and stay for the Iditarod!

If you’re more focused on the Iditarod, the official events start on Thursday evening, with the musher’s banquet. Not all of our guests choose to attend the banquet… but it is a great event, and it is an opportunity to meet the mushers, and to get some sense of the atmosphere of the race. If you were going to include the Start Banquet in your package, you would certainly want to arrive in Anchorage on Wednesday – it would be a shame to count on an on-time Thursday afternoon flight to get to the banquet on time Thursday evening.

Friday is a day that we generally leave as a free day for our guests. Many of our guests have never been to Alaska, and having a day to explore on your own is often just what the doctor ordered. However, there are some activities that you could choose, either as a part of the package, of as something you could do on your own.

One of our guests snapped this photo on a drive down Turnagain Arm the day before the start of the Iditarod

In past years, we have been able to arrange kennel tours at a professional racing kennel. You’d think that mushers would be too busy the day before the race to take time to show people around… but they tell me that if you’re not ready by Friday, you’re not ready. You could also visit some of the museums in Anchorage, or take a drive down Turnagain Arm (a spectacular drive), visit Girdwood, or even take a day cruise into Resurrection Bay. There is plenty to keep you busy in Anchorage on the Friday before the start of the Iditarod.

Friday night you’ll want to get a good night’s sleep. The race starts at 10 AM on Saturday, but there are many good reasons to get downtown early and walk around.

More on that in the next post!

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

We have received a lot of notes from people who are interested in attending the Iditarod this year. Many of the people who contact us are not really sure what a typical Iditarod experience is like… So I decided to do a short series on the various stages of the race, from a visitor’s perspective.

The character of the experience changes from day to day… the first few days are more laid back, and more like a spectator sport. But once the race starts, in many respects, the guests are racing the mushers, trying to get to the checkpoints ahead of the leaders. Of course, the end of the race is a big celebration in a small town.

We’re going to start at the beginning of the race, and work our way towards the end. In the middle, we’ll talk a bit about some of the other activities that guests can do during their idle time.

If you’re interested in having us arrange your Iditarod package, give us a call at (877) 692-5275 or +19073342888. Or you can go to our website and complete our form, and we’ll get back to you!

An Iditarod racer heads to Nome from the Iditarod restart in Willow.

Everything we do at Alaska Vacation Store is a custom creation. We spend time getting to know you and what you want and expect out of your visit to Alaska, and from our conversation, we put together a custom package for you. A few years back, we started offering Iditarod packages, and they have become very popular.

One thing that is a little different about our Iditarod packages is that while everyone’s package is custom, because everyone is coming for the same event, a lot of our guests end up crossing paths with each other throughout their trip. To be honest, I was a little concerned about that when we first started offering Iditarod packages – I assume that when people purchase a package with us that they want to be on their own and not a part of a group. But as it turns out, our Iditarod packages give you the opportunity to decide how much you want to interact with other race fans… so you have the benefits of a custom-designed trip, and the opportunity to make new friends who are traveling along with the race.

Our packages start in Anchorage, generally no later than the Thursday before the start of the race. Guests can choose their length of stay and the destinations and activities that they want to visit. Some guests stay all the way through to the end of the race, and others come only for the first few days.

If you are considering coming up for the Iditarod, now is the time to start planning your trip. The Iditarod has become very popular over the last few years, and lodging is becoming difficult to arrange in some of the locations. If you are considering going to Nome for the finish of the race, lodging there is particularly difficult to arrange… and we will only do the end of the race for guests if they purchase an entire race package… the reason being that we want to be able to accommodate our customers that are coming to view the entire race.

It is definitely not too early to start planning your trip. Contact us now to make sure we can put together your Iditarod adventure! The phone number is 877 692 5275.

You may have visited our honeymoon website, alaska-honeymoon.com -  and if you haven’t and you’re planning a honeymoon, or even just a romantic Alaskan, you should visit – and perhaps you noticed that there is a page there that describes getting married on a glacier, and other Alaskan destination weddings.

We arrange two or three of these a year… Most of them have been weddings on a glacier, but in fact, there are lots of fantastic places that you can have your wedding ceremony in Alaska. If you’re considering a destination wedding, Alaska is an excellent choice… and Alaska law makes it easy for us and for you to have your wedding in an amazing, awe-inspiring setting.

Alaska has an interesting law that dates back to territorial days that allows anyone to be appointed a “Wedding Commissioner” for a day. This is a court order that allows the designee to perform a legally-binding wedding ceremony on a specific day. This allows us to arrange your bush pilot or boat captain or glacier guide to perform the ceremony for you, after taking you out to one of Alaska’s most spectacular settings.

We have arranged weddings on the slopes of Mount McKinley, on Root Glacier in Wrangell St. Elias National Park, and under the northern lights in remote interior Alaska, after an all-day trek by dogsled.

If you’re considering a destination wedding in Alaska, we would be happy to make the arrangements for you as a part of your wedding and honeymoon package. The process is easy… and the only additional step that is necessary is to arrange for your marriage license. Here’s what we do:

First we spend some time talking to you about your wedding and honeymoon, and find the right setting for your ceremony. We plan all of the main details – transportation, lodging, activities, and of course, the ceremony itself.

Next, you apply for the marriage license via mail or fax. This is a step that you, as a couple, have to perform yourself. We’d help you if we could, but you have to submit the application and the fees. There’s a three day waiting period for a marriage license, but that clock starts when the state receives your application, and that can be done my mail or fax. When we plan your wedding and honeymoon, we’ll coach you through the proper procedure, and make sure your application is sent to the proper place. The only other consideration is that you have to appear in person at the Bureau of Vital Statistics to pick up your marriage license. Because of that, planning the dates of your ceremony will revolve around the business hours of that office. I know, not so romantic… but a necessity.

Third, we will arrange for someone to perform the ceremony. Depending on where you decide to get married, we will probably ask the guide or pilot to perform the ceremony for you, but we can designate anyone to perform the ceremony, even a friend or family member, if they happen to accompany you to Alaska. We will secure the order from the court, and have the paperwork on hand for the ceremony.

All that is left is for you to pack your bags and come to Alaska… pick up your marriage license, and then head off on your adventure.

Destination weddings in Alaska don’t have to be expensive. Fortunately for us, Alaska is chock-full of beautiful wedding locations, so finding a place is no problem at all.

Like any of our packages, the wedding and honeymoon packages require that we get to know you a little bit, so it is best to spend some time on the telephone discussing the different options. All you have to do is call us at 877-692-5275, drop us an email, or go to our website and complete this form.

Alaska is a great place for a honeymoon, and a great place for a wedding.

All five of the Pacific salmon have a common name, and a really common name. Chinook salmon are also called kings. Coho are also called silvers. Sockeye are reds. Pink salmon are also called humpies. Alas, the poor chum salmon, whose common name conjures up images of ground-up fish gruel used to attract sharks, are also known as dog salmon. This name stems from the practice of using chum salmon as dog food… so in at least one respect, both of these monikers end up more or less in the same linguistic place – ground-up fish gruel… one for attracting sharks, the other for feeding sled dogs.

Chums get no respect.

In many places in Alaska, the run of pinks and chums more or less coincide with each other. These runs also coincide with the silver salmon run, and often people will be actively fishing for silvers, but catching pinks and chums. Most people don’t keep the pinks – by the time they reach fresh water, their flesh is quickly deteriorating in quality, and since people prefer the silvers, they toss the pinks back. Almost nobody keeps chums. Chums are for dog food. Nobody eats dog food.

Yesterday we were fishing (for silvers) and catching a lot of chums. They may not be the choice for the table, but I tell you what, they sure are strong. They’re not jumpers, they’re pullers. Pullers and head-shakers. They’re aggressive and take lures readily. They can get quite large. They’re colorful. The lure of choice is typically a Pixie or a Vibrax, and this is exactly the lure you’d be using for fishing for silvers. Unfortunately, chums are so strong that they often straighten the hooks on the lures! So when you’re fishing for silvers and hook a chum, you often experience the double-disappointment of catching an undesirable fish and having to retire your favorite lure, because the hooks are ruined!

When I was fishing this weekend, I had a couple of guests with me from the East Coast. Neither had ever caught a salmon before. The silvers were being elusive, but the chums cooperated, and both of my friends landed hard-fighting chums. It is an experience I am sure they won’t forget.

After my friends left, the rest of our fishing party started to discuss how chums really need another name… something that doesn’t conjure images of ground-up fish gruel. The commercial fish people have done just that, and when you see chums in the supermarket, you’ll see them under the name “silverbrite” salmon. Seems a little misleading, doesn’t it?

In the spirit of full disclosure, until yesterday, I had been disparaging the chums myself, by grouping them together with pinks, and calling them “humpies and chumpies”. But I am past all that – I have seen the error of my ways, and now I have a new-found respect for them. I may not want to catch them and take them home and cook them… but as fighters, they’re top notch.

So, we narrowed down our new name for chums to two choices. Which do you prefer?

Alaskan River Marlins or Tiger Tuna?

I did something this year that I hadn’t done in the past… I bought a ticket for the PSEA Matsu Valley King Salmon Derby. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a fishing derby, the basic idea is you purchase a ticket (in advance) and then you check-in and weigh the fish you catch, and you are eligible for prizes.

In past years, I hadn’t purchased a derby ticket, and in most years I catch some pretty respectable fish. Last year I caught a fifty pounder, and the year before, a forty-eight pounder. These fish aren’t winners, but they’re close… I figured if I put the time in, and focused on catching a really big fish, I’d have a good shot at the top prizes.

What a mistake.

So I started fishing hard in June, and I caught four king salmon… But I released them all, because they were too small.

Then it happened… with three weeks left in the season, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closed the rest of the king salmon season. The numbers of returning kings was so small, they were concerned about making sure that there were enough fish to spawn.

When fishing closed, I hadn’t kept a single fish… and I realized that I hadn’t really enjoyed fishing all that much. Fishing, when there is money (or prizes) on the line… and making a choice to compete for them, is a lot more like work than fishing.

Don’t get me wrong… fishing derbies can be fun, and in Alaska, they raise money for some great charities. But doing what I did was a mistake. I thought it would be fun, but it wasn’t near as much fun as just fishing would have been.

Back in 2006 I wrote this post about the advantages of visiting Denali National Park in the shoulder seasons. I have to say that this is definitely the way to go when it comes to visiting Denali National Park – you can take your own vehicle, stop where you like, and really enjoy the park without the crowds. Short of winning the road lottery, there really isn’t a better way to see the park.

I usually make the trip to Denali once a year to go into the park – I have gone both in the spring and in the fall, and both are worth the trip. Both times of year have their advantages, but the weather can be iffy, too.

The National Park Service does not keep the road clear in the winter, so once the road gets snowed-in in the fall, it remains closed until spring. A friend of mine who works for the National Park Service alerted me to the fact that it is now time to start clearing the park road of snow.  This annual ritual, called “Spring Road Opening” or SRO, started a few days ago. I find it amusing that something as mundane as getting the heavy equipment out and plowing the road has an acronym.

This activity also has its own web page, so you can follow the progress. Fortunately for all of us, the page is actually rather entertaining – you get updates on the latest progress, see photos of the park and the snow removal effort, and reports of animal sightings are posted.

According to the latest update, there is a chance that the road will be open as far as the Savage River this weekend. It will take a few more weeks to get the road open to Teklanika, which is as far as they allow the public to go in the spring… but you can hike or take bicycles beyond that point, if you like.

If you get the chance, head up to Denali before the middle of May, and take the drive out to Teklanika. It is a great trip, and a great opportunity to see wildlife and experience Denali National Park without the crowds.

And if you can’t make it, follow the progress on the SRO web page!

I have always been a bit of a weather nut. Those of you who are also weather nuts know what I mean. At a point earlier in my life, I was destined to become a television weatherman, but alas, I was defeated by calculus. But before I suffered that defeat, I did get my feet wet in that field, and I even worked for NBC News in Washington, DC, where I was assistant to their longtime weatherman, Bob Ryan.

One of the main reasons I moved to Alaska was my love of winter weather. I moved from Washington, DC to Fairbanks in 1986, and to say that the winter weather in Fairbanks was different, well… that would be an understatement. But I fell in love with the Fairbanks winters, and when I got into the business of creating custom tours for clients, I always thought that there was room to do winter tours in Alaska – after all, the first thing that many people think of when it comes to Alaska is snow and cold.

No matter how much I love winter, I thought it was a bit of a stretch when I heard that The Weather Channel had declared that Fairbanks was among the top ten winter weather locations in 2009-10.

Wow.

Really, it isn’t that big a stretch to realize that winters in Fairbanks are pretty spectacular… but it is a little surprising that others would figure it out. It is true that Fairbanks gets modest amounts of snow, but the climate is otherwise dry, and late in the winter (like in February through April), the skies are clear and the sun is bright most days. The weather is just perfect for winter activities, and a lot is happening in Fairbanks in March, including the World Ice Art Championships, and the Open North American sled dog races. Many of our guests go to Fairbanks in the winter for dogsledding adventures and a visit to Chena Hot Springs. I even created a special website just for Alaska winter tours.

So, a hearty thank-you to The Weather Channel for recognizing something we here in Alaska already knew.

We do winter right!

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell traveled to Miami to attend the Cruise Shipping Conference in Miami Beach… where he was scolded by the cruise lines for Alaska’s tax and environmental policies. At issue are wastewater discharge standards, and a $50 head tax. The Miami Herald quotes Stein Kruse, President and CEO of Holland America Cruise Lines, who says the industry is, “faced with overzealous regulations” and without relief, “we [the cruise industry] can and will redeploy our ships.”

The cruise industry’s arguments are specious. While it may be true that the taxation and regulatory environment in Alaska is rather stringent, it isn’t punitive. The revenue from the head tax goes directly to infrastructure and services costs that are related to the industry itself. With regard to the wastewater standards, I think that it is fair to say that any community would enact standards to protect their local waters, especially when the use of those waters are shared with other sectors, most notably, commercial fishing.

In the same Miami Herald article, Governor Parnell is quoted as saying, “I heard clearly the need for some change to the head tax and the need to have environmental regulation based on good science. . . I’m going to try to work to reduce costs for the [cruise] industry,”

Back in December I wrote a piece detailing the cruise lines objections to the head tax. Their complaints are no more valid today.

The cruise lines have decided to punish Alaska by reducing the number of cruise passengers coming to Alaska by 140,000. In some Southeast Alaska communities, that will be a disasterous blow. But there are some (myself included) that believe that just because the cruise lines reduce the number of sailings to Alaska that does not necessarily mean that demand for Alaskan destinations is reduced. That isn’t the case.

While the cruise lines scale back their sailings, the airlines have added 930 seats a day between the Lower 48 and Alaska. That is almost 100,000 additional passengers coming to Alaska by air. When you consider that many Alaska cruises are one-way — meaning that they originate in Vancouver, BC and end in Alaska (or the other way around), most cruise passengers use airlines to complete their cruises. If you estimate that half of the cruise passengers travel to or from Alaska by air, then the reduction in cruise-related air traffic might be around 70,000. So does it make sense that the airlines would add 100,000 seats to Alaska routes while there are 70,000 fewer cruise-related air passengers? Not unless there was going to be other demand for Alaska travel.

While the reduction in the number of cruise passengers will hurt port-call communities in Southeast Alaska, the rest of the state is going to benefit. In addition, the cruise lines stated at their conference in Miami that they plan to introduce 26 new ships between now and 2012, and these new ships represent an 18 percent increase in capacity. Clearly the cruise industry expects growth, and that would suggest that the demand for Alaska will remain strong. I doubt that $50 per passenger is going to make much difference at all in the demand for cruises in the long term.

Governor Parnell should stand firm against the cruise lines demands.

When people plan their Alaskan vacations, many come with a list of must-see and must-do destinations and activities. Unfortunately for most of them, they miss out on one of Alaska’s most spectacular destinations – Wrangell St. Elias National Park.

The park itself is the largest park in the National Park Service system, and is the home to numerous glaciers and powerful rivers, and nine of the 16 tallest peaks in the United States.

Mount Wrangell, seen from the Richardson Highway near Copper Center. Note steam plume in the background from the summit.

But like anywhere in Alaska, the scenery and landscape only tells part of the story. If you venture into the center of the park, you’ll experience one of the most interesting and beautiful places in Alaska – the towns of McCarthy and Kennicott.

Kennecott (sometimes spelled Kennicott) was born of the search for minerals and metals. Unlike many of the locations in Alaska, the draw here was copper, not gold. The Kennecott Copper Company built a mine and a company town to extract the rich copper ore. Along with the buildings and machinery for the mine, a railroad to the sea was built to haul supplies and copper back and forth.

The town of McCarthy sprung up next to Kennecott – and while the mine closed in 1938 and was abandoned, McCarthy continued on as the small, remote outpost in the middle of the Wrangell Mountains.

Visitors to McCarthy and Kennecott come for the exceptional beauty of the land. Kennicott Glacier flows past Kennecott and right to the edge of McCarthy. A short walk from town takes you to the toe of the glacier, where you can walk across the moraine, and sit at the edge of the lake as ice and rocks fall off the face of the glacier. From Kennecott, daily guided hikes head off up the valley and guides take you out onto Root Glacier (a tributary glacier of the Kennicott Glacier).

Hikers on Root Glacier, Wrangell St. Elias National Park

Hikers of all ages head out onto the ice with guides, and the more adventurous can head out for extended glacier hikes and ice climbing seminars. If you’re both adventurous and a history buff, you can take a guided hike to the mine entrance, over 3000 feet above the valley floor. If you’re a history buff but prefer to stay in the valley, you can take guided tours of the mill building, or just walk around and explore on your own.

Photographers will love McCarthy and Kennecott, because there are so many varied subjects. Whether you want to photograph the ghost town, or prefer landscapes and scenery, you could literally spend weeks there choosing interesting things to shoot.

When it comes to finding a place to stay in McCarthy and Kennecott, there are a number of great choices. The two main spots are Ma Johnson’s Hotel and Kennecott Glacier Lodge.

Ma Johnson's Hotel in McCarthy

Ma Johnson’s Hotel is in McCarthy. The building itself was a rooming house in the early 1900′s. It has been converted to a hotel. The rooms are rather small, but are decorated with period-authentic furniture. When one walks into Ma Johnson’s, you can’t help but feel that you’ve been transported back to 1920.

Kennecott Glacier Lodge is located among the old abandoned mine and mill buildings in Kennecott. The architecture is striking, as the building itself hugs the mountains, and overlooks the glacier.

McCarthy is what I call an “end of the road” town. What that means is that it is a place where people are drawn who prefer to avoid some of the trappings of modern life. As a result, the town is full of colorful and eclectic people – all of whom have interesting stories about how they ended up there at the end of the road.

Getting to McCarthy and Kennecott can be a bit of an adventure. The McCarthy Road is a 60 mile gravel road between Chitina (pronounced ‘Chit-na’) and McCarthy.

Kuskulana Bridge on the McCarthy Road

The road itself was built on the old railbed that ran to Cordova. The road is narrow, and drivers should take their time. But you’ll be rewarded with spectacular scenery and some thrills along the way. If the road seems a little too adventurous for you, there are companies that will either fly you in to McCarthy or take you by van. You could even combine the  two, and see the road, and also experience the park from the air.

We include McCarthy in many of our packages. It is a great destination for visitors that are looking for some adventure, some history, a great photo safari or just an amazing authentic Alaskan experience.

(I wrote a blog a few weeks back about the Iditarod – click here if you’d like to check it out…)

Alaska Vacation Store has been doing Iditarod packages since 2005, and they’ve increased in popularity every year… to the point where they are booking up earlier and earlier. The problem planning an Iditarod adventure is that in some of the locations, lodging is very limited, so there is a limit to the number of guests we can accommodate.

That is the way it has been this year… until yesterday, when I was able to find a few more rooms in the Talkeetna area. That means we can take another party or two for the Iditarod this year. So if you’ve been thinking about coming to Alaska for the Iditarod, but figured it was too late, here’s your chance to see the Last Great Race.

Our packages start in Anchorage, then head to Willow and Talkeetna, where you will fly out to Rainy Pass checkpoint for the day. After that, there’s plenty of room to customize your trip.

As I mentioned, space is limited… but I am really glad I was able to find a little more space. One of the best parts of this job is making people’s dreams come true… and the Iditarod is a dream of a lot of people.

Here’s your chance!