I’m excited to share some photos and thoughts from our summer trip to Alaksa! This was our first big vacation with our then 23 month old son. These were his first airplane rides, his first national park, his first time on a train and a boat, and so many other milestones. ✔️

This blog post is a mix of photos from my camera and from our phones. 📷 As a photographer, I bring a camera and like to document our vacations, but this trip was not about the photos. I don’t even have photos of some of my standout memories. Almost all of the photos were taken quickly, without too much thought about settings or composition. It just wasn’t that type of vacation, and that’s alright.

This was an EVENTFUL trip. Bring an energetic mini-toddler across the continent, and you’ll know what I mean. 😜

But aside from toddler wildness, our Alaska + Vancouver trip was filled with beautiful views, animal sightings, and fun times watching Daniel have new experiences.

Austin ✈️ Seattle ✈️ Fairbanks 🚞 Denali 🚞 Anchorage 🚞 Whittier 🛳️ Hubbard Glacier 🛳️ Glacier Bay National Park 🛳️ Skagway 🛳️ Juneau 🛳️ Ketchikan 🛳️ Vancouver ✈️ Austin

We took about every form of transportation possible —train, taxi, plane, bus— but also a sea plane and a sled dog cart.

Alaska, we’ll be back.

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Alaska Railroad

While first planning an Alaskan cruise with a larger group of family members, Matt and I decided that we couldn’t fly to Alaska without adding at least one extra national park to the itinerary.

The cruise left from Whittier, but we flew into Fairbanks, almost 500 miles north. From there, we rode a train on the Alaska Railroad to Denali National Park. After a couple days, we rode another train to Anchorage, then another to Whittier.

This was A LOT of time on trains, especially since one train was delayed for an hour so the police could remove a drunk/violent passenger. (I have video of him being drug off the train 😳).

But don’t worry, that event was NOT representative of our experience. 😆 We had a wonderful time on the train. The views were AMAZING almost the entire time. It was also the perfect way to travel with a toddler. All of our trains were mostly empty, so we had tons of space to move around.

The train route took us along many rivers, cliff sides, and bridges. We saw animals like moose, swans, and eagles.

We even saw the Denali mountain, which only about 30% of visitors get to see. We had an extra clear day and several sightings of the peak.

Denali National Park

This park is whole the reason we added a complicated leg to the beginning of our trip. It was a lot of added planning, but we don’t regret it. ⛰️🛤️

We stayed at a small touristy area right outside of the Denali park entrance. Of course, we didn’t have a rental car because we arrived by train, so it took extra planning to get around.

The park feels very remote and only has one road through the center. We got on the bus for a 4.5 hour round-trip bus ride to the East Fork and back. There the road ends, as they’re doing a years long construction project to build a retaining wall and a bridge to combat landslides due to climate change.

The bus ride was fun, but also challenging. The road was bumpy and the park requires car seats. Convincing Daniel to sit down for hours after days of travel was not ideal. But it’s the only way to see the park, so we made it work. It was 50% awesome and 50% a nightmare. 🤷🏼‍♀️

We saw tons of animals here too! Moose, caribou, Willow Ptarmigan (the Alaska state bird), doll sheep, a porcupine, rabbits, and a grizzly bear.

The bear was one of our favorite sightings. Our bus driver pointed it out, and we looked out the window to see it in the distance, emerging from the trees onto a rocky cliffside, with the sun coming through the clouds and shining directly on it. I can’t describe it dramatically enough. It was an epic moment.

This was our favorite grizzly bear experience yet, second to our up-close hiking encounter at Glacier National Park. But this time, we weren’t in danger, so I guess this was better. 😂

The view from East Fork, the current turnaround point while a new bridge that can handle the landslides.

Just getting to this point and back was 4.5 hours on the bus! This park is truly huge. It’s hard to believe that we just saw a small part of it.

The colors in the soil were so pretty. These photos are not overly edited, that’s actually how it looked.

The bear!

Cruise: Grand Princess

This was my second cruise, and it was much different than a Caribbean cruise. We could see land almost all the time, which meant constant sightseeing. Land was often very close on both sides of the ship.

From the boat, we could see bears walking on coast. There was also a day when otters floated by consistently all day. 😍

I highly recommend booking a room with a balcony, if possible. The extra space is definitely worth it, especially if you have kids that need freedom to play in the room while you look at the views.

We did a 7 night cruise on the Grand Princess, with an Inside Passage route:

• Whittier
• Hubbard Glacier – Scenic Cruising
• Glacier Bay National Park – Scenic Cruising
• Skagway – Port
• Juneau – Port
• Ketchikan – Port
• Vancouver – Port/ End of Cruise

We also did three excursions on the cruise:

1. Skagway: Dog sledding
2. Juneau: Seaplane ride over glaciers
3. Ketchikan: Boat ride to Misty Fjords National Monument

I’m not exaggerating when I say that they were all incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I can’t even choose a favorite.

Watching Balto for the first time 🐕😊. The TV had great Alaskan themed movies available.

One of the many otters that floated by near Glacier Bay National Park.

There was one night when we had a particularly amazing sunset. The mountains and the water were glowing.

This was at about 10:30pm, and it happened to be a night when my mother-in-law was nice enough to put our son to bed and hang out in our room to give us the night off. I was lucky to see this sunset!

Hubbard Glacier, as seen from the cruise ship

The Hubbard Glacier and the two “scenic cruising” days onboard the ship were the reason we chose this cruise route. It was a good choice. 👍

There’s not too much to say other than that it was big and impressive, and we got lots of time to see it from the boat.

Watching the chunks of ice float by the ship was cool (Titanic vibes), and the constantly changing scenery was beautiful.

Glacier Bay National Park, as seen from the cruise ship

This whole day was filled with incredible views, and the glacier was the highlight. The ship got very close to glacier, and we sat on our room’s balcony for a few hours and just looked at it. It never got old.

The balcony was a huge help for these moments.

Skagway

This was our first port stop of the cruise. In the morning, we walked around the town. In the afternoon, we went on a dog sled tour. 🐕

The bus ride outside of town to the dog sled area was beautiful. When we arrived, we walked through a lush valley covered in yellow dandelions. Apparently they’re a popular snack for bears. 🐻

Holding Daniel on my lap tightly during the sled dog cart ride was one of my highlights of the trip. At first he was wary of the dogs, because they were loudly barking, but as soon as they took off running, he smiled so big. I think he’d like to travel everywhere by sled dog cart from now on. 🐾

I usually have one big photography regret on every vacation, and this is it. I wish I could have pulled out of my camera in this valley. While walking to the sled dog park, I jumped out of the group to take these photos on my phone. It was one of my favorite views from the trip.

Juneau: Seaplane ride over glaciers

If I had to rank the top things I’ve ever seen in my life, the view from this 45 minute flight is near the top. We were supposed to fly over 5 glaciers, but it seems like much more than than, because several of the glaciers were miles long.

For most of the flight I was, I was focussed on not throwing up because of the turbulence and large amount of exhaust inside the plane. But even while feeling bad, I willed myself to focus more on the incredible views.

Also, for about 20 minutes, my window was fogged, probably because from my breath and having my face near the window trying to see as much as possible. 🙃 Most of these photos will not be available in the Print Shop, because I was shooting through a dirty, fogged window, but I’m still happy to have these photos for my own memory. The photos just don’t do it justice.

Ketchikan: Misty Fjords Boat Tour

Our Ketchikan excursion was a 5.5 hour boat ride to Misty Fjords National Monument and back. I purposefully did not look at many photos online, trying to keep the views a surprise. It was even better than I could have imagined.

On my limited research, one thing I was prepared for was mist. It’s called Misty Fjords after all. Many reviews mentioned cold and rainy conditions making it hard to see mountains and wildlife or making it hard enjoy outdoor areas of the boat. This couldn’t have been more different from our experience! We were lucky to have a beautiful, clear day, and we spent lots of time outside. The small amount of “mist” only added to the ~vibe~.

The national monument was like Yosemite, but on water and somehow even bigger and more epic. We passed mountain after mountain that looked like Half Dome or El Capitan.

It also felt like such a private experience. We only passed one small boat the whole time we ventured through the monument area. We saw no other people, but we did see birds, seals, and bald eagles. When our boat paused for us to look around, it was completely quiet except for the sound of a waterfall.

Final Thoughts

Alaska Railroad

10/10 would recommend traveling Alaska by train. We loved pretty much everything about it. It’s slow, but in a good way.

Inside Passage Cruise

I would suggest this exact itinerary! We chose the Inside Passage in order to see the Hubbard Glacier and Glacier Bay National Park, and they lived up to the hype. We saw places that you can only travel to by boat or sea plane.

We liked that the Grand Princess was smaller than most cruise ships. It’s was a nice ship, but old. It could have used more kids activities and play areas, but we did like the indoor pool.

Traveling with a Toddler

Do recommend bringing a 23 month-old on a 2 week trip that requires lots of travel? No.

2/10 do not recommend this age if you have an energetic kid. If you have a chill kid…maybe? But we don’t have a chill kid. 🙃 We have a kid who wants to talk, run, and explore, and who will not watch tv for more than 15 minutes. Normally, these things are great, but it wasn’t compatible with much of this trip: sitting in a car seat for hours, being quiet on a plane, sitting during long dinners. I guess sitting was the problem. 😅

The cruise portion was the easiest, but it was still hard. It was just bad timing for him. Taking him at 6 months or 18 months would have probably been better.

If you cruise with a toddler though, get a balcony! Quietly sitting on our balcony at night while my son slept a few feet away inside was sooooo nice.