Frommer's Favorite Experiences

Taking your First Sight of Alaska: Flying north from Seattle, you're in clouds, so you concentrate on a book. When you look up, the light from the window has changed. Down below, the clouds are gone, and under the wing, where you're 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.

Gawking at Punchbowl Cove: 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.

Looking out 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 it's midnight.

Seeing Mount McKinley from the Air: Your Bush pilot guides his plane up from the flatlands of Talkeetna into a realm of eternal white, where a profusion of insanely rugged peaks rises in higher relief than any other spot on earth. After circling a 3-mile-high wall and slipping through a mile-deep canyon, you land on a glacier, get out of the plane, and for the first time realize the overwhelming scale of it all.

Witnessing the Northern Lights: Blue, purple, green, and red lines spin from the center of the sky, draping long tendrils of slow-moving light. Bright, flashing, sky-covering waves wash across the dome of stars like ripples driven by a gust of wind on a pond. Looking around, you see that your companions' faces are rosy in a silver, snowy night, all gazing straight up with their mouths open.

Chugging along the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway: The narrow-gauge excursion train, sometimes pulled by vintage steam engines, climbs the steep grade that was chiseled into the granite mountains by stampeders to the Klondike gold rush. The train is a sort of mechanical mountain goat, balancing on trestles and steep rock walls far above deep gorges.

Discovering Grand Pacific Glacier: Two vast glaciers of deep blue meet at the top of an utterly barren fjord. They rubbed and creased the gray rock below for thousands of years before just recently releasing it to the air again. Three intimidating walls of ice surround boats that pull close to the glaciers.

Driving along the Seward Highway/Alaska Railroad: Just south of Anchorage, the highway and rail line have been chipped into the side of the Chugach Mountains over the surging gray water of Turnagain Arm. Above, Dall sheep and mountain goats pick their way along the cliffs, within easy sight. Below, white beluga whales chase salmon through the turbid water. Farther south, the route splits and climbs through the mountain passes of the Kenai Peninsula.

Fishing in the Kenai River: The biggest king salmon -- up to 98 pounds -- come from the swift Kenai River. Big fish are so common in the second run of kings that there's a special, higher standard for what makes a trophy. Silvers and reds add to a mad, summer-long fishing frenzy.

Watching a Bear fish for its Dinner: There are many places to see bears in Alaska, but if your goal is to make sure you see a bear -- and potentially lots of bears -- the best places are Pack Creek, Anan Wildlife Observatory, Katmai National Park, Kodiak Island, and Denali National Park.

Examining the Ketchikan Totem Poles: This Tlingit homeland has three unique places to see totem poles: historic poles indoors at the Totem Heritage Center, faithful reproductions outdoors in a natural setting at Totem Bight State Park, and brand new poles as they are created in a workshop at the Saxman Native Village Totem Pole Park.

Spotting a Whale: You've got a good chance of seeing marine mammals almost anywhere you go boating in Alaska, but in some places it's almost guaranteed. A humpback jumped right into the boat with whale-watchers in Frederick Sound, near Petersburg, in 1995. The whales show up reliably for feeding each summer. Lots of otters and humpback whales show up in the waters near Sitka. In fall, when the town holds its Whale Fest, you can spot them from a city park built for the purpose.

Cheering at a Baseball Game at Midnight: For more than 100 years, they have been playing the Midnight Sun Baseball Game in Fairbanks, a baseball game without lights that doesn't begin until 10:30pm on the longest day of the year.