All of Alaska in Sixteen Days - $4,350

July 13-28, 2008. Wrangell’s bears, Sitka’s Tlingits, Totem Poles, & Russians, Juneau’s glaciers and whales, a relaxing ferry trip, Anchorage’s museums, Alaska Railroad’s scenery, Kenai Fjords and Denali National Parks, Fairbanks’s riverboat and Musk Ox, Barrow option, airfare between Seattle and Fairbanks.

Thumbnail description On July 12^th, we gather for a 7:00pm orientation at the Seattle SeaTac Clarion Hotel the night before flying to Southeast Alaska. First stop is Wrangell, where the Anan Bear Sanctuary has both black and brown bears catching salmon at the height of their annual run. A Tlingit Native opens the Chief Shakes Tribal House to us and explains their culture. We find the largest collection of centuries-old petroglyphs in Alaska on the rocky shore. You can make a rubbing.

We fly to Juneau, where the local UU’s host a party and invite us into their homes. A boat takes us to Tracy Arm Fjord whose 2000 foot cliffs rise from the water on both sides. Glaciers calve huge icebergs into the sea. We visit the vast Mendenhall Glacier.

The Alaska State Ferry takes us to Sitka, once capital of Russian America where Tlingits and Russians are featured in the Sitka National Historic Park. Local UU’s greet us with a barbecue salmon feast. A local raconteur leads a walking tour. We see Tlingit dancing, totem poles, and historic museums. We ride a semi-submersible undersea boat through a giant kelp forest.

Early Sunday morning we fly to Southcentral Alaska, where Anchorage UUs greet us and take us to their Sunday service. We’ll visit the world-class Anchorage Museum of History and Art and the Alaska Native Heritage Center, a veritable living museum created by five indigenous tribes to explain their heritage. The UU’s host a dinner party at which they’ll lead a discussion about Alaska life, culture and politics. America’s most spectacular train ride takes us to Seward and the SeaLife Center, a unique institution largely paid for by the settlement of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We’ll see puffins and murres fly underwater there, and you can participate in feeding and caring for them. Seward’s UUs feed us unique dishes such as caribou stroganoff and roast bear from animals they harvested. An all-day boat trip takes us through Kenai Fjords National Park where we’ll see glaciers calving icebergs, and lots of arctic marine life in the wild: humpback whales, sea lions, sea otters, puffins, murres, auklets and other arctic birds. We walk right up to Exit Glacier on our charter bus return to Anchorage where we’ll catch another beautiful train bound for Denali National Park. We take the Wilderness Tour through the park to view bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep and arctic birds. You can take an optional guided raft adventure or hike a short trail.

We end our trip in Fairbanks with the Musk Ox Farm, the great new University Museum of the North and the Discovery riverboat trip to a reconstructed Athabaskan village. Local UU’s will treat you to a specialized half-day exploration of their community. You can take an optional flight ($420) to Inupiat Barrow, the farthest north town on the continent. Some of us will canoe to church for the service in the farthest north UU church in the world. We’ll have a dinner party with our UU hosts to “close the curtain” on our tour. You arrange your own flight home from Fairbanks. If you wish, you may stay longer at your own expense, and explore Alaska on your own before heading home.