Unique digital nomad travel adventures from around the U.S.
Holidays are a funny thing. Every culture has them and sometimes they cross country boundaries (e.g. Easter, Christmas) and are celebrated in many countries. But sometimes they are unique to that particular country. It’s easy to think other countries’ holidays sound crazy when you did …
As a proud Boisean, I am pleased to share my list of top ten things to do in Boise, Idaho. One of the first things I do when researching a place I’m going to visit is to try and find some must sees for that …
In the Part 1 of this discussion on Alaska, we recommended some places to visit if you are fortunate enough to visit this beautiful state. This post will talk about some fun Alaska experiences and adventures to have. In no particular order, here are a few things that I particularly enjoyed and would recommend to anyone visiting this area. (Remember, I’m centering this around Denali National Park and a few hundred miles radius.)
Let’s just start with the Grand Poobah, shall we? This park is the reason loads of people go to Alaska. It is a pretty big area at six million acres, so roughly the size of Vermont. The biggest mountain in North America is found here: Denali (formerly known as Mt. McKinley) which is a daunting 20,310 feet high. Besides the huge mountains in the Alaska Range, Denali also has meadows, glaciers, taiga and tundra. All ready and waiting for you to explore.
Some people are flown into the park, but the majority arrive by car. There is only one road into Denali and private vehicles can only go fifteen miles in before the have to turn around. (Can you imagine how different Yellowstone would be if it managed traffic like this?) Beyond mile 15, visitors explore the park by riding buses.
These buses drive all the way to Kantishna, 92 miles from the park entrance. They stop along the way, so riding a bus to Kantishna and back can be a full day experience. Some buses are narrated and are more of a tour; the others are shuttles, so people can hop off at stops and go explore and then make their way back to the road and a new shuttle when they want to join civilization again. The furthest I ever made it into the park was a few hours on a ranger hike.
Advice: I really like joining ranger hikes; many national parks do these. It seems like a 2-for-1 deal to me; I get to see the park past my steering wheel and I get to learn about history, wildlife, vegetation, etc. Most hikes I’ve been on have been free, so that’s nice too.
The whole reason I went to Alaska was to work at a helicopter company. I can’t recall ever riding in a helicopter before my arrival and it wasn’t ever really something I had as a goal. Instead I knew some people who recommended this job and it sounded like fun. That being said, I did learn to really appreciate these guys; it is a very different experience than flying in a plane.
I was pretty spoiled as a part of the crew and I mainly went for a ride when we didn’t have paying customers (this meant I would get a window seat-usually up front with the pilot). From this vantage point, helicopters have 180* views out the windows. They can do cool things that planes can’t like taking off straight up and hovering if you want to look at something.
Besides the pretty things you get to see along the way, our helicopters landed on glaciers and dropped us off to go heli-hiking. Unless you walked a very long way, you wouldn’t be able to reach these places. Remember, Alaska is huge. One of my favorite memories from my summers in AK was when our entire crew flew to a remote rustic resort that could only be accessed by air or water. We had a great time staying in the hotel before we had to fly back to work. I know places like this exist elsewhere (there is one on the Salmon River in Idaho), but it is just fun to be in such a remote area.
When I lived in Alaska, only planes (not helicopters) were able to land within the Denali National Park boundaries. These planes are mostly small (not like a plane you fly from L.A. to Chicago). I flew on two different planes, one held about six people and the other about 15. The bigger flight was on a plane that was specially outfitted with landing gear that were basically giant skis. We landed on Ruth Glacier, right underneath Denali.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of a storm going on that day so all I saw was snow. But I could imagine a super giant mountain looming above me, so that counts, right? Actually, this is a good time to mention that not very many people get to see Denali when they go to Alaska. That’s because it is so big it makes its own weather and most of the time that weather is stormy or cloudy. If you are lucky enough to see it on a bluebird day it is truly spectacular.
The Nenana river runs alongside the highway by Denali National Park. Unlike most rivers in the lower 48, but pretty common in Alaska, it starts at a glacier. This means the river is cold, cold, cold. One of the adventures you can have in Alaska is to go on a river rafting ride, but you’ll want to wear a dry suit. The ice on top of the river starts to break up around June and is open for business for three months. Brrr….
B had an adventure rafting in Alaska when her friends decided she was skilled enough (read never piloted a boat before) to take on the Eagle River on her own raft. Newsflash: she wasn’t. She ended up taking a swim in her dry suit, but like a boss held onto her oar.
The whole state of Alaska is like one great big hiking trail. At least when it isn’t covered in snow or ice. We had two naturalists who teamed up with helicopters to take guests on heli-hiking adventures. I would sometimes join them and learned all sorts of fascinating tidbits: lichens and mosses might look the same, but moss has stems and leaves.
After work I would venture into the Park and go for hikes or runs. Towards the entrance of the park there are loads of marked trails that you can hike. Several times when I was out and about I had to stop or go a different direction because moose were hiking on the trail with me. An interesting point about hiking deep in Denali is that they ask you not to walk in a single file line. This is categorically different from most other places I’ve hiked where they want you to stay on the trail to protect the vegetation. In Denali, they want the park to stay wild and untamed so people walking side by side prevent trails from forming and ensure it stays uncultivated.
Advice: if you see a baby moose, make sure you leave it alone. Mama will be around somewhere and won’t like you meddling.
Because I’m not really into seafood, I decided to spend my time off doing other things instead of fishing. But I am definitely atypical; loads of fisherman hit the state each year hoping for a good catch. There are two main fish that are caught in Alaska: halibut and salmon. Halibut are funky looking–they are diamond shaped and both eyes are on one side of their bodies. They can be gi-normous and weigh several hundred pounds.
To go halibut fishing you should go to Seward or Homer and join a charter boat. To fish salmon in Alaska you do something called ‘dipping.’ Dip nets are bag shaped nets that are no longer than five feet wide. You basically stick your net in the river and nab the salmon as they swim past. A lot of Alaskans use salmon as a staple to feed their family; my Alaska native friend said they ate more salmon growing up than hamburger because they couldn’t afford to pay for beef.
When visiting one of the coastal towns (Seward, Homer, Whittier, Valdez, etc.), you can find boats that will take you out into the ocean to look for wildlife and watch glaciers. I took two of these trips, one in the Kenai fjords in Seward and one in Whittier. Both were very nice and we were able to get up close and personal with glaciers. The boats pull in close to the glaciers and cut their engines so it is really quiet. You can hear the crack of the ice as the massive chunks of ice calve and splash into the ocean. We didn’t see any whales on these trips but we did see some puffins which are adorable little birds that look a bit like penguins.
At the helicopter office we came in contact with a lot of tourists. They all inevitably wanted to list off all of the animals they had run into during their visit. We called them Wild About Denali (WADs). I’m going to be a WAD and list off my favorite critters I saw during my time:
Glaciers are cool. (Ha!) They are giant sheets of ice and are sometimes covered with snow and dirt. They can be smooth or have deep crevasses. I think the prettiest time to see them is when they have little glacial pools. The water in these is generally a bright aquamarine color so it contrasts impressively with the white glacier. As I mentioned above, I did land on Ruth’s glacier once. But I landed on several other glaciers in our helicopters in all different spots, depending on where the pilot felt like going that day. You can also hike onto some glaciers, but where’s the fun in that? However you get there, make sure you tread carefully. Being as glaciers are made of ice, they can be pretty slick.
We at Jane Sees the World love train travel. If you don’t feel like renting a car in Alaska, you can hope on the AKRR and enjoy the scenery without the stress of driving. The train goes from Seward to Fairbanks and is kind of pricey, but it is well worth it if you are a train enthusiast. Interesting side note: the train will probably be smoother than driving. The temperatures in AK can be so harsh the ground under the pavement freezes and thaws, creating cracks in pavements and heaves so when you drive it feels a bit like a roller coaster. Crews are constantly doing repairs; the standing joke is there are two seasons in Alaska, winter and construction.
Alaska is a great place to see the Aurora Borealis, or northern lights. If you are there when it is dark, which being as I was there in the summer, it wasn’t really. Around the summer equinox in Denali it never gets really dark. It was very strange acclimating to this; at times I would go outside at 2:00 a.m. and it would still be light enough to see where I was heading. It is not as bright as day, instead it is more like dusk. Anyway, one night late in the season it was dark enough to see the northern lights. It was so cool. Our viewing was all green (reds and oranges are more rare) and sure enough, they dance across the sky just like you see in the movies. I’ve since tried to view them in other places, but haven’t been lucky enough to get a repeat performance.
I had a really wonderful time during my eight months in Alaska. I was able to see wild animals up close and personal, fly in helicopters to remote places, and whenever I could fit it in I would work a little too. If any of you get the chance to explore this incredible place, do it. Do it as soon as possible for as long as possible. Just remember, everything’s bigger in Alaska (sorry, Texas).
During the summers before and after I went to grad school, I spent the four months working at a helicopter company located next to Denali National Park in Alaska. It was glorious. I love Alaska; next to Idaho it is probably my favorite state. In …
Taking the train across Canada was a dream come true for me. I do not remember when I first learned that it is possible to ride a train across Canada, but I was young and it remained a dream of mine for many years. After …
As has been mentioned a time or two, I’m a bit of a fan of National Parks. Likewise, B and I are big fans of getting away for short weekend trips. These two likes came together last weekend when we ventured northwest to the North Cascades National Park in Washington. Read on to learn what we did and how much it cost to enjoy the beautiful ‘Alps of America.’
We had several reasons, in addition to the two previously mentioned, for wanting to visit this park. In 2015, the North Cascades National Park attracted 27,000 visitors. Compare that to the 10 million visitors to the Great Smoky National Park, and you can see why we wanted to explore somewhere very few (by comparison) others have. The next reason we wanted to visit has to due with that comparison with the Alps. We figured anything that looks remotely like the Alps is probably worth seeing and boy howdy, were we impressed. Lastly, for being so infrequently visited, North Cascades is pretty easy to get to this time of year and, for us, conveniently located just one state over.
North Cascades National Park has a north unit and a southern unit, and these are combined with the Ross Lake National Recreational Area to form the North Cascades National Complex. This complex is in the northern center of the state and the edge of the park forms the border with Canada. The Park Complex is not an island in the middle of nothing, though, it is surrounded by Wilderness or Forest areas. Basically, everything in this whole region is mountainous, covered with trees and or glaciers, and gorgeous.
We had a few options to get to the park; the two that made the most sense were to drive east from Seattle or west from Spokane. Since we only had two days for this trip and I’m sick of flying through Sea-Tac, we opted to fly into Spokane and head west, young man. Luckily, Southwest has a direct flight from B-town up to Spokane that left in the evening (meaning we didn’t have to miss any work). The Southwest flight was a very reasonable $56.98 and took one hour, which with the time zone change meant we landed at the same time we took off. Go figure. The cheapest flight back in the evening was on Alaska for $61.10.
Advice: look around different websites like Expedia and Google Flights to see if you can get good deals for flights. However, it also helps to know what airlines fly direct to what cities from your hometown. Spokane is a pretty small airport, so we knew we’d probably have the best luck with Alaska and Southwest. You should be able to find out the direct flights to your airport by looking at the airport’s website. This is especially useful when you have a compressed amount of time for a trip and the flight schedule is more important than cost. Round trip for our jaunt to Washington: $118.08.
Once we arrived in Spokane, we picked up our rental car that we would be spending a lot of time during the next few days. I will typically check a few of the conglomerate websites like Expedia and Orbitz to see what the going rate is for rental cars, but then I’ll do a search on Hotwire. I would say four out of five times the Hotwire price beats the others. We opted for the midsize Nissan Sentra for our weekend for $70.66. We did a lot of driving over the next few days and our fuel costs were $42.00. Given the hill situation and my passing cars as we rushed to the airport on Sunday, I feel like the Sentra did a very good job for us on fuel efficiency.
In Spokane we stayed at the Red Lion River Inn, a very nice place for the amount of time we stayed there. This was another Hotwire purchase and it put us back $68.00. We’ve talked about how choosing hotels on Hotwire can be a bit of a crapshoot because you can’t really control certain things. In this situation, we made sure to get two beds, but because the Red Lion has a restaurant in it, the $68.00 didn’t include a complimentary breakfast. Luckily we found a great co-op and got some yummy eats for the road.
Advice: local co-op markets can have a lot of really good stuff; much more than just food. They typically try to promote the ‘buy local’ spirit in other areas and I’ve purchased many a cute jewelry items from co-op markets.
Our lodging the second night was a much bigger struggle for me to find. There’s really not a lot of options in these parts; what few inns there were in the small towns in the middle of the Cascades didn’t have any vacancies. I looked on all the youzh websites and came up dry, except for a single wide trailer listed on Airbnb for $100. Beggars can’t be choosers, so we went ahead and reserved it. The only other option would have been to backtrack to where we came from or drive an hour past the park, neither of which sounded appealing.
The main reason for wanting to take this trip is so we could get out and explore this beautiful area. I did some heavy research into moderate day hikes and came up with a highly recommended Maple/Heather Trail Loop. This trail is in the Okanogan National Forest, adjacent to the Northern Cascades Park. I found a really great website for Washington Trails at www.wta.org. If ever I plan to hike in Washington again, I’ll definitely head to that site as a first step. Here’s what they say about our trail: “If ever there was a hike to satisfy all a hiker’s desires, this one comes as close as any. A loop hike with many fabulous changing faces throughout the seasons, Heather-Maple Pass features ridgelines blanketed in wildflowers in summer, lakes ringed with golden larches in fall, and before the highway closes for the season, a dramatic place to experience early winter’s snows.”
We seemed to have chosen just about the perfect time of year to do this hike because we saw a little of everything: the last of the wildflowers were in bloom, the trees were beginning to turn colors and in the distance we could see white from glaciers. The Cascade Highway does close when the snow makes it impassable, so it would be a gamble to wait until the fall colors were fully turning, but I can just imagine how incredible this trail would be then. Might be worth a second trip someday.
The loop was about 7.5 miles and had 2,000 feet elevation change. Once we were high on the ridge line, B commented that it was much better she didn’t realize we were going all the way up to where we were when we parked the car and looked up. I agreed. Speaking of the parking lot, we were able to use my National Park pass to waive the trail use fee because this hike was on National land; just another reason to get an annual parks pass. Along the hike we saw many chipmunks, a kamikaze bird, and tons of other hikers. But wait, you might be thinking, how can that be if nobody visits this place? Well, it turns out loads of people visit this area, but only a few actually go into the park. So we aren’t quite as unique and cool as I was thinking we would be. That’s about how it usually turns out.
On Sunday we went to the Visitor’s Center so I could get a stamp in my National Parks Passport Book (obvs.) and check out the offerings for sale. Typically visitor’s centers have a lot of the same swag, but the North Cascades National Park VC went above and beyond the call of duty. Maybe it is the proximity to the cool artists in Seattle? I’m not sure but B and I both bought some very cool, non-standard VC stuff. Afterwards, we went on a quick two mile loop down to the Skagit River and marveled at the old growth trees that were impressively tall. At this point we had to book it back to Spokane to catch our flight (frowny face).
All in all, North Cascades National Park is a great way to get out and explore nature at its best. Here’s how we came out in the end:
Flight: 118.08 +
Car: 112.66/2 +
Lodging: 168/2 =
Total: $258.41
Sure it cost more than that because we had to buy food and cute stuff, but I’m not adding that in here because I would have to do that at home too. Food prices were a little more than Boise, but comparable to the Seattle area. Overall, it was a pretty cheap way to see a really beautiful place.
Weekend trips are the bomb. They do make Mondays a little rougher than normal (especially if you land at the airport and immediately go downtown to see Will Hogue perform like we did) but they are well worth it to get away. The North Cascades National Park and the Maple/Heather Trail Loop make an excellent destination for a quick weekend trip. The mountains are calling…….
Last weekend I was feeling a bit nostalgic so I watched Roman Holiday on Netflix. In this movie, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck spend a whirlwind day doing all the things Audrey wanted to do in the Eternal City. It made me think about my …
I was lucky enough to experience a New Mexico weekend getaway and I highly recommend you plan one yourself. I feel New Mexico is a gem and one of our most underrated states. So I suggest you visit before the secret gets out. You do …
B and I get asked ‘where are you going next?’ quite often. Like we’ve mentioned before, we pretty much always have our next few adventures mapped out. But that is only for the near future and places that make sense for us to go next. There are so many amazing-sounding places in this great big ol’ world of ours. So we thought it would be fun to mention a few places on our travel bucket list that we are dying to visit. Hopefully, we’ll be able to cross all of these off soon!
The Azores are a group of nine islands about 1,000 miles west of Portugal. They are volcanic but covered with enough green to allow lots of agriculture, livestock and ranching. This little gem looks amazing and–bonus–it never gets too hot. This is a big deal. A beautiful green island that doesn’t get sweltering? Very hard to find. The Azores are growing in popularity, particularly on the East Coast. There is currently a direct flight out of Boston that can be found at very reasonable prices. I’m pretty sure if we lived in the northeast, we’d find ourselves in the Azores a few times a year.
Update: we crossed this travel bucket list item in 2017!
I think the Alps are pretty much the most amazing mountain range I’ve ever seen (maybe not my favorite–that nod goes to Idaho’s own Sawtooths). If you’ve been lucky enough to travel on the Eurail through Europe, you’ll have seen the stately Alps in many different countries. One country where I haven’t yet beheld these awesome mountains is Slovenia. The Julian Alps, as they are known here, are made of limestone and the highest peak is Mt. Triglav at 9,000 feet. Maybe it isn’t that high, but if you look through Google images you’ll see why this country is on this list. Crazy craggy peaks contrasted with emerald green valleys with little stone buildings every now and then. It looks like a fairy tale.
Spain is probably the most ‘normal’ country on this bucket list. It seems strange that I haven’t been here. Although B has spent some time in Spain, for me I think it might be like the boy next door–it’s all you have been looking for, but just not sexy enough to keep you from looking somewhere else. I’ll let you know if this theory holds up, because we are going to buckle down and go to Spain soon, hopefully in the next year or two. I took Spanish at college from a young man (think ‘Hot for Teacher’ playing in my head everyday as I walked into class) who learned Spanish in Spain. I’m very excited to hear a whole country of people doing the lisp-y thing when speaking Spanish.
I watch a lot of PBS (as well should you, dear reader) and one of their major sponsors is Viking River Cruise. I haven’t ever been on a cruise, but I really feel like a river cruise would be cool. Routes go through the Rhine and Danube Rivers amongst others and they just sound amazing. The boats are little so they only hold about 200 passengers, as opposed to the huge floating cities that are other cruise ships. The food is supposed to be great and there are tons of windows on the boats so you can keep your eye on the scenery at all times. I believe the crowd that frequents river cruises are a bit, ahem, older. But I would totally be cool with this. Maybe it is because river cruises are super cheap, older folks can just pay more.
If anyone has read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, they should want to visit Romania. It is, afterall, the country where Transylvania is located. Yes, Transylvania is an actual place. It is a place of magic and wonder–I picture the Bran Castle perched in the Carpathian Mountains. (Don’t those things just sound magical?!) I’ve heard that Hollywood has taken to filming movies in Romania and Bulgaria to cut costs, so I’d really like to visit here before it gets too mainstream.
I think I’ve mentioned how much I want to see Angkor Wat in other posts. But man do I really want to see this place. In Indonesia we were able to go to some really incredible temples and I imagine this complex would be much like that. It doesn’t matter what religion you subscribe to, there is just something powerful about seeing structures like this and knowing how much time and dedication it took to create them. I find it really inspiring and a testament to the amazing things people can do.
The Faroe Islands are a group of 18 rocky islands in between Norway and Iceland, but they are an autonomous country within Denmark. B first heard of these gems from a blog she reads and they sounded cool enough that now I really want to go to them to. One of B’s reasons for why they deserve a spot on this list is that they are off the beaten path and kind of sound like Iceland, only without all the tourists. If anything sells these islands, it would be that they are akin to the land of fire and ice.
That’s really all that needs to be said for why it would be amazing to see Egypt. I mean, come on–4,000 years ago people built huge stone structures and they are still standing. That is mind-blowing. There is, sadly, some crazy unrest going on in Egypt, so I probably won’t be hopping of a flight any time soon. But if they can stand tall for a few millenia, I think they can make it another few years until I can get there.
one of my favorite autobiographies is “A Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela. Much has changed since this incredible man was released from prison, but I would still be very interested to see the things and places he described in his book. Not to mention the lions, elephants, giraffes and pretty much every other cool animal they keep in zoos are indigenous to this place. This is one you have to mentally prepare for, though. The flights from the U.S. are looooooong.
No, not the maker of excellent outdoor apparel. But instead the region in the bottom tip of South America where the Andes are split by Argentina and Chile. Here are the words The Goog uses to describe Patagonia: steppes, grasslands, deserts, glacial fjords and temperate rainforests. How can all those various words describe one area? It must be pretty incredible.
This list could really go on and on. I think we all hold certain places in our hearts that for some reason or another are full of allure. The great thing about living right now is that we can actually go to these places–they don’t have to just be dreams. Hopefully, this list and yours can be more of a To Do List that we can cross off after we visit and add to when we hear about something new.
Panama has more than just hats, people. For one blissful month after finishing grad school and before the student-loan repayment plan kicked in, I was able to join my family in this cool Central American country. Here are ten interesting Panama facts. Locks Panama was …