Top Ten Things to Do with Teens and Tweens in Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula

Alaska, Best trip archives No Responses »

Sep 042011

Whether you arrive by ship or fly direct to Anchorage it is definitely worth taking a few days (or more) to explore the area around Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula. We spent a little over a week in the area and felt like we barely scratched the surface. Depending on what else you are doing on your visit to Alaska with teens or tweens you can pick and choose from our top ten list or try to fit them all in. Each of the links below will take you to a more detailed article about our experiences traveling around the area. Each article includes lots of photos as well.

Best Teen and Tween Activities in and around Anchorage

Hike Flattop Mountain – allow at least 2 1/2 hours to reach the summit and return. The mountain is located just outside Anchorage and the views are stunning.
Biking on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail – rent bikes downtown, grab a gourmet hot dog then spend the afternoon biking as much as 20 miles round trip. Watch out for moose!
Tour the Alaska Native Heritage Center - be sure to take a leisurely stroll around the replica native dwellings and ask lots of questions
Drive Hatcher Pass and Visit the Historic Independence Mine – step back in history and explore Alaska’s gold mining past. End the day with a float trip on Willow Creek or head north to Denali
Explore Girdwood, Mt. Alyeska and the Turnagain Arm – within an hour’s drive from downtown Anchorage enjoy the views from Beluga Point and take the Tram to the top of Mt. Alyeska

Best Teen and Tween Activities in Whittier and the Kenai Peninsula

Go Fishing Alaska Style – if you are anywhere near the Kenai Peninsula during the salmon season be sure to act like a native and go fishin’
Check out the Bears at Wolverine Creek or other spectacular fly-in sites accessible via float planes from Soldotna, Homer or even Anchorage
Go flightseeing over a glacier – combine this with fishing and flight seeing for an incredible day
Take a Prince William Sound glacier viewing day cruise from Whittier - get much closer to the glaciers that you can on a large cruise ship. Getting there is half the fun whether you drive through the tunnel or take the train
Visit the Soldotna Homestead Museum – be sure to spend some time chatting with the historical society members about growing up on the edge of civilization!

Hints for a Successful and Sane Alaska Trip with Teens and Tweens

Teens at the top of Mt Alyeska

As with any family vacation that packs a couple of parents and their teens and tweens into cars and hotels for days on end, be sure to build in down time, book lodging situations that will give everyone some room to breath, plan to be outside a lot, and let the teens and tweens have a say in the itinerary. We also recommend asking the teens and tweens to help out on the photo crew – our #1 Son took many great shots that we might not have noticed, including some really nice ones of Alaska’s summer wildflowers, as well as most of our photos from the Flattop Hike and the Coastal Trail bike ride.

Note that we paid our own own way for all activities and lodging on the entire trip and were pretty happy with all our arrangements. However, there are a couple of folks we just have to give extra kudos including:

The Alaska Serenity Lodge in Soldotna. On a lake and just off the beat track it was the perfect place to chill out, roast marshmallows, enjoy the hot tub, and be totally amazed about how it never gets dark out in late June and early July.
High Adventure Air in Soldotna made our fishing/bearviewing/flightseeing day a major success. We particularly appreciated their waiting when we forgot our fishing licenses and had to rush back to the lodge to get them first thing in the morning!

We also recommend checking out some of the discount coupon books that are available online. We purchased the Northern Lights book for about $50 and saved hundreds with two for one discounts on museums, raft rides, tram rides and the glacier cruise. Just looking through its pages can give you some great ideas on activities and outfitters.

Finally, if you plan to do any amount of driving around the state be sure get a copy of The Milepost guide which is likely to have a better idea of where you are going than many GPS systems. We found it to be very helpful, particularly when we made the spur of the moment decision to drive to Willow via Hatcher Pass rather than the main highway.

We’d love to hear if reading our blog influences your choice of what to do with your teens and tweens when your family visits Alaska. Please leave a comment or drop us an email to let us know how you do!

Teens Meet the Native Peoples at the Alaska Native Heritage Center

Alaska, Best trip archives No Responses »

Aug 142011

In between fishing, flying and cruising, we also found time to visit two of Anchorage’s major museums during our recent family vacation visit to Alaska. The Anchorage Museum is home to the Smithsonian’s Arctic culture collection as well as a number of local and travel exhibits. We spent an hour or two there on a rainy afternoon. By comparison, the teens and their parents found the Alaska Native Heritage Center to be much more engaging because of the opportunity it provided to talk with representatives of eleven of Alaska’s native peoples. If you only have time for one, we recommend spending a few hours at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Native peoples perform at the Alaska Native Heritage Center

The Center houses a relatively small collection of indoor displays that showcase native cultures, the pressures they face and the ways the different native groups have adapted since Alaskan statehood was recognized. In addition, an indoor performance space hosts a non-stop series of dancing, singing, instrumental, and athletic demonstrations. The real highlights for us, however, were the six authentic life-sized Native dwellings located around a small lake in back of the main building.

Totems representing the Eyak, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures are on display

Each of these dwellings was staffed by natives of the culture represented by the dwelling. They were extremely generous in sharing their personal stories and taking the time to answer our many questions.

Traditional dwelling for native peoples from Northwest Coastal Alaska

Many of the cultural representatives grew up actively participating in their cultural traditions. They also spoke about the lives of their parents and grandparents, many of whom had lived in traditional style dwellings until the 1930s.

The traditional homes of the Unangax and Alutiiq peoples were built to weather harsh winters and wet maritime climates

The teens were fascinated to learn about the ways that small handbuilt kayaks were used to hunt whales and fish. They even got to try their hands using some of the traditional tools.

Native peoples hunted whales from small kayaks similar to these

We also enjoyed hearing the stories one young woman shared about her summers spent hunting and skinning moose while living the traditional Athabascan lifestyle.

A representative of the Athabascan people recounts her childhood summers spent at traditional hunting camps

We opted to tour the native dwellings on our own rather than joining an escorted tour around the lake. In many cases we were the only ones inside a dwelling and had ample opportunity to ask questions. This is a great activity for families visiting Anchorage with teens, but be sure to budget a couple of hours in order to get the most out of your visit. If you have visited the Center let us know what you thought about it.

Anchorage Vacations

Teens Go Fishing Alaska Style!

Alaska, Best trip archives No Responses »

Aug 052011

One of the best activities we did as a family during our recent trip to Alaska was a full day flightseeing/bear viewing/fishing day at Big Twin Lake and Wolverine Creek. We hit the lake on a beautiful blue sky day when the salmon were running and the bears were feeding. See our article, Alaska: Where the Bears Are, for photos of the black and brown bears we saw. Today we thought you might be interested in taking a peek at salmon fishing Alaska style.

Our day started out with a floatplane trip over the Cook Inlet to a landing on isolated Big Twin Lake where we transferred to an 18 foot fishing boat and headed toward Wolverine Creek.

Alaska's Big Twin Lake

We soon joined about 10 other boats also looking for salmon and bears. We were surprised to see so many other folks on such a remote lake, but as we learned, when the salmon are running many Alaskans make it a priority to get out on the water.

Fishing with the masses at Wolverine Creek

We had brought our lunch so the next six hours were spent fishing, bear watching and touring the Lake. Each person is limited to 3 fish daily. With the help of our guide Ben from High Adventure Air, the teens both caught their limit and Mary T got one as well.

Our guide Ben, with High Adventure Air, was terriffic!

Of course, once you catch 30 pounds of salmon the question is what do you do with it. Many of the lodges on the Kenai Peninsula have on site facilities if you want to fillet and freeze your own fish. We opted to take it to a commercial processor where it was filleted overnight and returned to us in the morning. We shared about half of it with the Alaska cousins and traded the rest for canned smoked salmon that came home with us as a reminder of our fun Alaskan fishing day!

We linked this article to the Delicious Baby Photo Friday Page with is a great place to find links to lots of other fun family travel photos.

Photo Friday: Flight Seeing Over Alaska’s Double Glacier

Alaska, Best trip archives 11 Responses »

Jul 272011

Photo Friday: Flight Seeing Over Alaska's Double Glacier

One of the most exciting things we did during our Alaska family vacation was to take a flightseeing/bear viewing/fishing day trip with High Adventure Air, based in Soldotna, AK on the Kenai Peninsula. Flightseeing in Alaska can be expensive. It is not unusual to see prices hitting $700/person for a full day trip similar to ours but leaving from Homer or Anchorage. By leaving from Soldotna, we paid half that rate and had a thrill of a lifetime! In addition to catching 30 pounds of salmon and getting the chance to view a number of active brown and black bears at Wolverine Creek, our High Adventure Air pilot treated us to a fly over of nearby Double Glacier. It was definitely one of the more amazing things we saw in Alaska! We had [...]

Photos from a Day Cruise on Blackstone Bay

Alaska, Best trip archives No Responses »

Jul 242011

Photos from a Day Cruise on Blackstone Bay

Of the many things we wanted to do during our visit to Alaska, seeing glaciers was top of the list. As we were taught in school, glaciers are moving rivers of ice that result as the weight of snow compresses on itself and converts into thick ice that moves slowly along pushed by gravity and its own weight. Despite having seen many pictures of glaciers, nothing prepared us for their sheer size and beauty. Many visitors see glaciers as part of their vacation cruise from Seattle or Vancouver. However, since we flew to Anchorage for a land based vacation that included lots of time with our local cousins, we opted for a day cruise out of Whittier, about an hour south of downtown Anchorage. Whittier is on the western edge of Prince [...]

Teens and Tweens Enjoy the Hike up Flattop Mountain near Anchorage, AK

Alaska, Best trip archives No Responses »

Jul 092011

Teens and Tweens Enjoy the Hike up Flattop Mountain near Anchorage, AK

We’re back from Alaska and have many great stories and photos to share. In 7 days we covered roughly 700 miles from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula and Whittier to Hatcher Pass and Willow. We felt like we just got a taste of what the State has to offer but are thankful that we had fairly good weather and enjoyed lots of time with cousins, aunts and uncles along the way. Over the next few weeks we’ll share our Top 10 list of the best things to do when visiting Alaska with teens and tweens, starting with a hike up Flattop Mountain in the Chugach State Park on the eastern side of Anchorage. The summit of the 3,500 foot mountain is reached via a 1.7 mile trail that rises 1300 feet [...]

Heading Down to the Jersey Shore!

Best trip archives, Jersey Shore 4 Responses »

Aug 262010

No matter how old they get, the teens never get tired of the annual pilgrimage to the Jersey Shore. Hope you enjoy these photos of some of our favorite Jersey Shore moments. Need more ideas for great Jersey Shore activities for teens and tweens? Check out all the links on our Jersey Shore Top 10 list. Hitting the Beach in Belmar Catching the Waves on Boogie Boards A Thrill Ride a Minute – Boardwalks Jersey Style Winning Some Silly Prizes in the Arcades Can’t forget mini-golf Lots of time for family fun! We included a link to these photos on the Delicious Baby Photo Friday roundup. Stop by there if you enjoy family travel photos.

Older Entries