Frommers ShortCuts - Anchorage and Environs, Alaska

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ISBN 9781118191613 (ebk); ISBN 9781118191606 (ebk); ISBN 9781118191620 (ebk)

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About the Authors

Kris Capps is a longtime Alaska journalist who has traveled extensively throughout the state. She spends most of her time in Interior Alaska and currently lives right outside Denali National Park with her teenage daughter; this has been her home for 20 years. She writes a weekly newspaper column about the Denali area for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and is the author of award-winning guidebooks including the Denali Road Guide and Denali Walks.

Mike Dunham moved to Quinhagak, Alaska, on the Bering Sea, with his parents in 1955, when he was 4 years old. He has since lived and worked in Mountain Village, Togiak, Afognak, Homer, Haines, Kodiak, Kenai, Seward and Cordovabut mostly in Anchorage, where he is the Arts and Entertainment editor for the Anchorage Daily News. He has won numerous regional and national awards for articles on travel, art, education, food, history and humor, as well as for his work in radio. Outside Alaska he has written for publications ranging from Orion magazine to Opera News. He is among the editors of the University of Alaska's recent "Grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik, an Eskimoan Language" and suspects that he is the only non-Alaska Native in the world who has to divulge on his tax returns how much money he makes as an Eskimo dancer.

Dave Kiffer is a fourth generation Ketchikan resident on both sides of his family. A professional jazz musician with degrees in Journalism and Creative Writing, he has worked for newspapers and public radio in several states. He currently runs Historic Ketchikan, a non-profit that promotes economic development through historic preservation and heritage tourism. In addition to serving as the current Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor, Dave teaches music and writes humor and Alaska history columns for sitnews.us. His wife, Charlotte Glover, is a Youth Services librarian for the Ketchikan Public Library who has done travel research for "Alaska Best Places" and "Frommer's Alaska" for many years and contributes regularly to TripAdvisor. Their son Liam is 10 years old and is on track to win the 5K in the 2020 Olympics.

Frommers Star Ratings, Icons & Abbreviations

Every hotel, restaurant, and attraction listing in this guide has been ranked for quality, value, service, amenities, and special features using a star-rating system. In country, state, and regional guides, we also rate towns and regions to help you narrow down your choices and budget your time accordingly. Hotels and restaurants are rated on a scale of zero (recommended) to three stars (exceptional). Attractions, shopping, nightlife, towns, and regions are rated according to the following scale: zero stars (recommended), one star (highly recommended), two stars (very highly recommended), and three stars (must-see).

In addition to the star-rating system, we also use six feature icons that point you to the great deals, in-the-know advice, and unique experiences that separate travelers from tourists. Throughout the book, look for:

special finds those places only insiders know about

fun facts details that make travelers more informed and their trips more fun

kids best bets for kids and advice for the whole family

special moments those experiences that memories are made of

insider tips great ways to save time and money

great values where to get the best deals

The following abbreviations are used for credit cards:

AE American Express DISC Discover V Visa

DC Diners Club MC MasterCard

The Best of Alaska

The works of man are not what bring visitors to Alaska. Driving into a city or town at the end of a long, empty road feels surreal because everything is, in a way, in the middle of nowhere; the fact that things have been built at all, often with heroic difficulty, makes even tiny cabins special. Alaskas real draw and glory is the works of nature, so numerous and stupendous as to make any list of bests a mere suggestion of where to start. Natural forces of vast scale are still shaping the land in their own way, inscribing a different story on each of an infinite number of unexpected places.

Alaskas unformed newness makes it interesting and fun. Despite the best efforts of tour planners, the most memorable parts of a visit are unpredictable and often unexpected: a humpback whale leaping clear of the water, the face of a glacier releasing huge ice chunks, a bear feasting on salmon in a river. As a visitor, opening yourself to whats new, real, and unexpected is your job, but its an effort thats likely to pay off.

The best Views

A First Sight of Alaska: Flying north from Seattle, youre in clouds, so you concentrate on your book. When you look up, the light from the window has changed. Down below, the clouds are gone, and under the wing, where youre used to seeing roads, cities, and farms on most flights, you see instead only high, snowy mountain peaks, without the slightest mark of human presence, stretching as far as the horizon. Welcome to Alaska.

Punchbowl Cove (Misty Fjords National Monument): A sheer granite cliff rises smooth and implacable 3,150 feet straight up from the water. A pair of bald eagles wheels and soars across its face, providing the only sense of scale. They look the size of gnats.

From the Chugach Mountains over Anchorage, at Sunset: The city sparkles below, on the edge of an orange-reflecting Cook Inlet, far below the mountainside where you stand. Beyond the pink and purple silhouettes of mountains on the other side of the inlet, the sun is spraying warm, dying light into puffs of clouds. And yet its midnight. See .