In 2025, we spent the summer in Alaska. I went up for a touring job with Premier Alaska Tours, and Mike and the RV came along for the ride — another chance to spend a summer in the Last Frontier. I never blogged the story at the time, but it’s been begging to be written. With so many friends heading back up for the 2026 season, Alaska has been front of mind lately. So here we go!
Premier Alaska Tours
The opportunity first came up a few years ago while I was attending an IATDG (International Association of Tour Directors and Guides) conference. Premier Alaska Tours was there and hiring. I already had commitments for that summer, so I passed — but I tucked it away and decided to make it happen for the 2025 season. My goal was to direct enough tours to really hone my skills and pad my resume. The money was a bonus, of course, but luckily we’re in a position where that’s not the primary motivator.
The Drive Up
We left Heber City on April 15th after a full year there — read about that here. The last time we drove to Alaska (read those posts here, here, and here), we felt like we had to rush it — I was still working for IBM and had taken vacation days for the drive, so there was a real ticking clock. This time we wanted to be more leisurely. But I still had to be up there for training by April 30th, which gave us just two weeks.
Here’s the thing about driving to Alaska in mid-April: Alaska season runs May 15 through September 15, and outside of those dates, they roll up the sidewalks. Last time we made it in 9 days and had time to detour through Dawson City and the Top of the World Highway. This time we made it in seven — not for lack of trying to find entertainment along the way, but because nothing was open! I have a shorter post specifically about the drive up — find that here.
Anchored in Anchorage
Because of the job (more on that over on Phyl’s Journey), we were stationed in Anchorage the whole summer. RV parks in Alaska are expensive and, frankly, not very nice. The one we stayed at in Anchorage did the job — we’d actually stayed there back in 2017, so we knew what we were getting into. Livable. Fine. Not glamorous.
We were genuinely thrilled to be in Alaska for the summer, but in the end I worked more than expected, the fishing turned out to be less exciting than the legend suggests, and being anchored right in Anchorage got old fast. As Mike put it: one road goes an hour north, one goes an hour south — and that gets repetitive in a hurry.
About that fishing reputation: you often hear sweeping praise for Alaska fishing, but a lot of it is either salmon (which is really snagging, not traditional fishing) or halibut, which is deep ocean fishing — neither of which is really Mike’s style. Add in weather that kept him homebound more than he’d hoped, and it was a quieter summer than anticipated on that front. I had forgotten that Mike does not do well sitting idle. That is why we started work camping, and I suppose why we need to continue.
A Visit from Mike’s Sisters
One of the absolute highlights of the summer was when two of Mike’s sisters — Vicky and Debra — flew up for a week with their husbands, Keith and Joe. We rented a VRBO just south of Anchorage and used it as the launching pad for a full tourist week. My tour director training came in very handy as the unofficial Alaska expert, and the activity discounts from work didn’t hurt either!
Vicky and Keith stayed on an extra two days, which gave us the opportunity to buzz up to Fairbanks — and yes, “buzz” is the right word: seven hours up, seven hours back, two night stay. We took in Denali on the way, and I’m glad they got to see a little more of Alaska. But here’s the thing about Alaska: it is absolutely massive, with very little of it accessible by car. So even “a little more” is still just scratching the surface.
Kenai Fjords Wildlife Tour
One of the most memorable events during the sisters’ visit was a wildlife tour out of Kenai Fjords National Park — and this tour never, ever disappoints. This day was no exception.
We saw whales breaching, endless whale tails, puffins, sea otters, glaciers (including glacier calving), and then the absolute over-the-top sighting: humpback whales bubble-net feeding. If you’ve never seen this, let me explain, because it is AH-Mazing. A dozen or so humpbacks pick one whale to dive down first and blow bubbles in a rising column, trapping small fish inside. Then the rest dive down and come rocketing up through that column with their mouths wide open, scooping up everything in their path. Nature’s most coordinated dinner party — and we had front row seats.
Sherry’s 80th Birthday
On our first trip to Alaska in 2017, we met Sherry and Gary Gates, who live in Salcha, just outside of Fairbanks. Being in Alaska at the right time meant we were invited to Sherry’s 80th birthday party — and what a party it was. Held at her daughter’s house (about a third of a mile as the crow flies from Sherry’s place), the celebration lasted four days. All six of her children, most of her 31 grandchildren, and many of her 42 great-grandchildren were there — plus friends, spouses, and the general wonderful chaos of a big family reunion.
I committed to learning the names of her six kids and their spouses. That was my limit. 😄
We also hit it off with Sherry’s sister Elaine and her husband Brian — they’re in the Phoenix area, which means we’re far more likely to cross paths again. Sherry and Gary come down to the lower 48 every winter, so we usually manage to connect with them somewhere along the way.
It got me thinking: the first year of full-time RV life, I felt genuinely lonely and socially isolated. Now, nearly 10 years in, I run into friends almost everywhere we go. That shift is one of the most wonderful things about this lifestyle — and it sneaks up on you.
Kathleen and Roger
Back in Heber City, we’d noticed a couple at the RV park with a Milepost book — a dead giveaway that someone’s planning the drive to Alaska, since it catalogs every mile of every route north. We struck up a conversation, started strategizing, and they ended up joining us for a month in Anchorage and we got in quite a few activities.
Another set of RVing friends, Phil and Lynn Barnidge, had plans to visit us in Alaska but ran into SO many troubles on the road that they never made it. They got deep into the Yukon before deciding to bag it and head back south. Such a bummer — we were really looking forward to that!
Lake Clark Bears 🐻
On our first Alaska trip, we took the ferry to Kodiak Island and flew out to see the Kodiak Bears — hands down the single greatest wildlife experience of our nearly ten years of full-time RVing. So naturally we wanted something comparable this time.
My first choice was Katmai National Park — you know the iconic photos of bears catching salmon mid-leap at Brooks Falls? That’s Katmai. Problem: reservations need to be made a full year in advance. So that was out.
The consolation prize — which turned out to be no consolation at all — was flying to Lake Clark National Park. You fly out of Anchorage (about 1.5 hours), land on the water, transfer into a boat, and cruise along the shoreline watching bears. The flight was an adventure in itself, the scenery was stunning, and a nice salmon lunch was included. Cool and overcast, but the boat was covered and comfortable. We saw more bears that day than we had all summer combined.
Now, I have to tell you about the sisters’ version of this trip. We’d told Vicky, Debra, and their husbands about the Lake Clark experience, and they were keen. Kathleen and Roger had found an outfitter out of Soldotna (about two hours from Anchorage) at roughly half our price. We couldn’t get out of our booking, so they went with the cheaper option without us.
As they say — you get what you pay for. The flight was great! But the boats were open aluminum fishing boats. No cover. Pouring rain. No lunch (bring your own). No toilets (bring your own TP… and a Ziploc bag to pack it out). They still loved the bear sightings — right up until they realized that a bear had wandered to the exact spot on shore where one of them had just stepped off to find a tree. The two sisters stood bear guard for each other. 😂 Suddenly paying twice as much didn’t sound so bad.
The Alaska State Fair
The Alaska State Fair is held in Palmer, in the Matanuska Valley — famous for its giant produce. The extended summer daylight in Alaska does something extraordinary to plants: everything grows fast and huge. Giant cabbages, enormous pumpkins, record-breaking vegetables of every variety. It’s a fun, only-in-Alaska kind of outing, just an hour from Anchorage. Definitely worth an afternoon.
The Drive Home
At Premier Alaska Tours, we were committed through Labor Day — the last big push of tourist season. That was September 5th, we left on the 6th. I had a tour out of Albuquerque starting September 15th. Once again, we found ourselves racing the Alaska Highway.
In 2017, the RV made the round trip to Alaska and back without a scratch. This time, not so lucky. Pulling into a Harvest Host field, the slope was steeper than it looked, and we came down hard — smashing the rear fiberglass cap of the RV on the ground. Two tears of about 12 inches each, plus a bent frame. Not great.
The day before we left, Mike was attaching the tow bars and discovered one was extremely loose. Further investigation revealed that a weld on the car’s frame had broken. The car wasn’t safe to tow. So, last-minute pivot: we drove separately. Mike in the RV, me in the car — 2,700 miles from Alaska to Butte, Montana, where Mike’s son Dan lives. My plan to fly to Albuquerque from Calgary? Out the window.
Driving separately sounds fine in theory. In practice it meant loneliness, no one to share the driving, and double the fuel cost across that stretch. Not my favorite travel memory.
We spent a month in Butte, which gave Mike time to get the car’s frame repaired and to teach himself fiberglass repair — which he then tackled on the RV once we got to Yuma. The fix isn’t perfect if you get right up close and look for it, but you’d never notice it otherwise. He also replaced the frame component on the car himself. Honestly, I don’t even want to think about what all of that would have cost to outsource.
We also ended up replacing both windshields — the car and the RV — which was its own category of “not cheap.”
Will We Return?
Honestly? Everything we did in Alaska — things we’d been looking forward to for years — felt somewhat familiar, because this was our second time. Alaska is breathtaking. If you’ve never been, go. Full stop. It belongs on every traveler’s list.
But for us, it felt like we’d checked the boxes. The job was fantastic, and I invested so much into learning Alaska that it almost feels like a waste not to go back and use that knowledge. That’s the tour director in me talking, though. On the personal side — on the marriage and lifestyle side — there are certainly more things we’d love to do in Alaska someday. But can’t that be said about everywhere we have the chance to roam?
