7 days in Alaska
Snowshoeing in the snowstorm, watching the Aurora at 2am, dogsledding, literally the unforgettable trip.
- Length: 7 days
- Money Spent/person: $1200
- Flight Ticket: $400
- Rental Car: $160
- Gas: $40
- Food: $90
- Dog Sledding: $80
- Snowmobiling: $130
- Souvenir, Uber, Snowshoe rent, ice museum: $300
„The unforgettable trip”. We kept ticking things off of our bucket list, I don’t even know where to start the story… First of all, if you are a winter-lover, you MUST GO!!!
My friend and I booked our flights for February 2020 in November 2019, through Skyscanner. We spent 7 days in Fairbanks, at the Best Western Plus Pioneer Park Inn that we booked at Booking.
Our bad experience!!!:
We rented a car through Enterprise… We had the confirmation email, number, everything we needed, this was not our first time renting a car so we knew what we need. We landed in Fairbanks, went to the counter and first they didn’t find our name, then they checked by the number, nothing… They said our reservation was canceled. We were SHOCKED. We did NOT cancel anything, and they said they had no available cars. They said they might have something the next day and they will call us. (Never did…). We took an Uber to the hotel and rented another car from a local company for 2x price. But I don’t want to talk about bad stuff, because the trip turned out to be AMAZING!
Just walking outside for 5 minutes:
Day 1: Ice Park
No big plans, we drove to an Ice Park, spent some time walking around then we went to the city center to a souvenir store.
DAY 2: Castner Glacier, Aurora
This hike does not require any skills, the length depends on the weather conditions, but it is a flat ‘walk’, but you must have snowshoes if there is snow, or it’ll be miserable.
MY FAVORITE DAY! We rented snowshoes from REI and went to a place that locals suggested, the so called Castner Glacier. All we knew is where to park our car, and then start hiking straight, by the creek and you’ll get there once… While driving in the snowstorm we kept saying, if there is no one besides us, we are NOT gonna do this, get lost in the cold storm and we are gonna be in the news! ha! LUCKILY we got there with 2-4 other cars at the same time and they didn’t have more informations either, so we put our snowshoes on and started hiking! It was freezing cold and could barely see the people in front of us. When it had been an hour we started questioning ourselves if we were in the right place because we hiked straight, but the creek was covered by snow. Here is what it/we looked like:
But then we started to see something and YESSS WE MADE IT! Spent a wonderful hour or so there admiring the glacier, taking pictures…
This was literally the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, don’t miss it if you are in Fairbanks!!! It is magical
and the day is not over!!! We went to sleep early because we set our alarm to 1.30am!!! We got in the car and drove up to Murphy Dome and here is what was waiting for us !!!
THIS is something that I can NOT describe. My N1. dream came true at that point. It is breathtaking, I could have just literally stared at the sky forever. But it was -30C so we had to watch it from the car.
DAY 3: Santa Claus House, Chena Hot Springs
We visited the Santa Claus House in North Pole, then kept driving to Chena Hot Springs. We were hoping to see the lights there but unfortunately it was too cloudy, so we went back to Fairbanks at night and tried again around 2 am, but no luck.
DAY 4: Snowmobiling & dogsledding
We had a pretty active day!!! We went snowmobiling and dogsledding!
We payed around $130 for the snowmobile tour for 1 hour, and $80 for the dogsledding. There are a lot of places to do these fun activities, I recommend you to ask in your hotel what they suggest, and read some fliers that you can find at the airport and hotels.
On this night we tried to see the lights again at 2am, aaaaaand SUCCESS!
DAY 5: Denali National Park
Unfortunately Denali National Park was closed from around mi.5 due to cold/snow, but we decided to still go, and just walk around as much as we can, so at least we see some mountains too!
And here I got to the end of my story, in conclusion I think 7 days is perfect (5+travel days) but of course always go for as long as you can! Unfortunately the chance of seeing the lights depends on the weather, you gotta be lucky to have clear sky nights! Plan ahead, check websites of parks, national parks. We also wanted to meet some reindeers but we decided not to pay for that, I’d rather see them in nature where they are not kept or forced to meet tourist. And you can always see some moose in the forest!!!
Checkout my youtube video of this trip!!!
and I hope you enjoyed my story and/or I could help you decide what to do on your trip!
Safe travels! @FruMyLens
Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed the pictures, feel free to contact me if you are planning on going to Alaska! Please leave a comment below if you liked the article or have any questions.