I travelled with a good friend, and did a 6 day independent land tour travelling before boarding the Island Princess on Wednesday, September 14 in Whittier. This entire trip was based on much input from reviews and individual CC members - and I thank you for all the good info and tips! We flew to Anchorage from NYC on the 8th:
Anchorage: We stayed 3 nights at the Historic Anchorage Hotel (great hotel, but ask NOT to be on the street side), visiting the Ulu Factory (a little disappointing since I thought there would be some sort of tour), Anchorage Native Heritage Museum (wonderful experience and knowledge received), the 4th Avenue Open Market (also a disappointment), Anchorage Museum (great experience) and rode the trolley ( a lot of fun). Restaurants: we ate at Orso, Glacier Brewhouse, Sacks (recommended by the hotel receptionist, and our favorite) and Muse at the Anchorage Museum. We enjoyed all of these restaurants, and recommend them all. Be prepared for noise and large crowds at the first two. Sacks was the calmest, and an intriguing mean. If you are into wine, try Crush Wine Bar a store front in the mall - great wine and cheese selection, with a wine shop above where we bought 3 bottles to bring on the rest of the trip.
Denali: on Sunday, we rented a car and drove the 225 miles to Denali National Park with a stopover at Talkeetna, where I just had to eat lunch at The Roadhouse since it was shown on The Food Network. Definitely a worthwhile - the lunch was amazing, and met some great soon-to-be-Princess cruisers there as well. It is a very cute town - check out the local cemetery which is dedicated to those who trekked the mountains, including Mt. McKinley. We were also graced with a view of Mt. McKinley for a few minutes during our drive to the park - we thought the mountains were pretty huge, with the layer of clouds above, and then POW - there was McKinley - made the rest of the mountain range look like pimples!! I will never forget that sight! We stayed at the McKinley Creekside Cabins - our arrival date was the last day of the cafe which was closing for the winter (this had not been mentioned when we booked). Our bagged breakfast was stale and without any butter/jam for the croissants. We had dinner at the McKinley Chalet which was very nice, decent pizza. We took the 8am shuttle into Denali the next morning . We did not have a very talkative driver, but the 8 hour trip was well worth it - we saw grizzly bears, bull moose, a lynx, a wolf (trotting right down the road at us without even glancing our way!), dall sheep, and bald eagles. We decided to roam around the Princess Denali Lodge and had dinner at the King Salmon Restaurant - white tablecloths, great service, but very casual, and good food. The next day we went to the Jeff King sled dog tour where we fell in love with the 6 week and 3 month old puppies. My friend (not a dog person) was very glad I insisted on doing this tour - the dogs were amazing. We then headed back to ANC to the Historic Anchorage Hotel again for 1 night before embarkation.
Great room, big closet for hanging items, smaller closet with shelves, great balcony and quiet location - across from elevators.