We arrived in Anchorage a week early to visit our daughter who is in the Air Force and is stationed at the Air Force base there, saved on our hotel bill anyway. We did rent a car from Thrifty, a great deal, a Chrysler 300 luxury sedan, for only $99 dollars (unlimited mileage) for the week. We did a lot here with our daughter. We drove to Seward, Alaska and took the eight hour Kenai Fjord Glacier/Wildlife cruise. We had a wonderful time; we saw Orca, Hump Back and Gray whales, stellar sea lions, mountain goats, bears, and eagles. The Glacier was beautiful, the water was crystal clear, and the glacier calved several times for us to the sound of thunder. We stopped at Fox Island on the way back and had a salmon bake.
Later in the week we panned for gold and Cold Creek, for $8 dollars you can rent a gold pan, shovel and a bucket and keep all the gold you find. We found that Cold Creek deserved its name, it was cooold. The only one finding any gold was the guy renting the pans. We had a wonderful time panning though. We went form there to the Alaska Wildlife Center and looked at bears, elks, magpies, reindeer and buffalo. It was kind of small, but definitively worth the stop.
We went to a reindeer farm just a few miles north of Anchorage in Palmer, Alaska. It was so beautiful, and the reindeer were so gentle, my wife and daughter got to hand feed a day old reindeer and I got to feed a 1500 lb Bull Elk. I was in heaven.