Alaska - Honeymoon 2009

A tradition of yearly honeymoon sounds a lot of fun - every year around July 4th, we go somewhere, mainly as a birthday gift to my lovely wife Manasi. This year we decided to make it a full week of holiday. After going through a list of destinations, we settled for Alaska since we could go far, but yet stay in the US.

We thought renting a car and driving across Alaska would be more fun than cruise because that way we could explore the inner part of Alaska as well. So before we had a skeleton plan of our trip we spoke to our friends who had already been there - Vaidehi/Kedar and Sameer/Tanuja. They offered us valuable inputs. Thanks guys!

Once the plan was roughly in place, we thought it would be fun to ask a couple to go with us - since that would keep us good company and we could enjoy more. So we asked Sandeep and Urmila who had yet to go on their first honeymoon since they got married only a few months ago. They jumped right in! So all 4 of us divided regions of Alaska for our bookings. Division of labor made research and bookings so easy...

When all the bookings were made and the time of vacation was near, we went and did shopping of good clothes :) . That was really our main preparation. Apart from that, only a few map printouts, confirmations etc.

So the overall plan looked like this:

Fly into Anchorage: Friday 26th night and stay at a B&B in Anchorage.

Sat: 27th and Sun 28th: Stay in Denali National Park; stay at Denali Riverfront Cabins.

Mon 29th: Drive from Denali to Chena Hot Springs and stay at Chena Hot Springs Resort.

T 30th: Drive from Chena Hot Springs to Fairbanks and live in a B&B called Aurora Express.

W 1st: Drive from Fairbanks to Valdez and stay at a B&B (BlessingHouse) in Valdez.

Th 2nd: Take a ferry from Valdez to Whittier (6 hours) and drive from Whittier to Cooper

Landing village. Stay in a B&B there (Hutch B&B).

F 3rd: Drive from Copper Landing to Seward. Take a 'Renown Tours Cruise' around Kenai

Fjords (6 hours) and live at a B&B called Barn Apetite.

Sat 4th: Go for a glacier hike at Harding Ice Field for the entire day and stay overnight at Barn Apetite.

Sun 5th: Drive from Seward to Anchorage and fly back to Sunny California.

So here it goes ...

On Friday Jun 26th, we flew to Anchorage (non-stop Alaska air flight from SFO). To our surprise, it was still light at midnight when we reached there. We already had booked a rental car, so took it and went straight to the hotel (B&B) and slept for a few hours after trying to close the curtains tightly :) .