7-Nights Alaska: Wilderness & Wildlife - Luxury Small Group Journeys

Girdwood

Located in Alaska's Chugash Mountains southeast of Anchorage, Girdwood is a popular year-round ski resort community. Visitors enjoy winter skiing and snowboarding on Mount Alyeska, and hiking, rafting and fishing in the summer.

Anchorage

Located at the upper end of Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska, Anchorage is Alaska's largest community. This popular tourist destination and crossroads for global air travel is only minutes away from the recreational areas bordering the Gulf of Alaska.

Talkeetna

Talkeetna offers the traveler a look at the real Alaska as well as the best view of Mt McKinley. Reached year round by car, railroad and airplane, it is a unique town that has been almost untouched by commercialism. Mountain climbers from all over the world leave from here to climb McKinley and add an international flavor to the town during the summer months. Winter visits to the area are becoming increasingly popular, offering dog sledding, Northern Lights viewing and snowmobiling.

Fairbanks

Fairbanks is the focal point for tiny villages scattered throughout the surrounding wilderness and a staging point for North Slope villages such as Barrow and the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Fairbanks is called "The Golden Heart of Alaska," a reference to the character of her people as much as to the location of Fairbanks in Alaska's interior, or to the discovery of gold in 1902. The Interior has temperatures ranging from 65 degrees below zero in the winter to 90 degrees above in the summer. Gardening is big in the Interior. Alaska Gardens abound. Fairbanks also has very long summer days. The shortest winter day of the year has less than three hours of sunlight, the longest never really ends, though officially it has over 21 hours.