Visit ALL the States - Alaska Trip Booked!

[canyonwalker]

For years now I've had a bucket list goal of visiting all the states in the US. After notching Alabama, number 49 out of 51 in 2016, I remained stuck at 49/51 for several years. (I'm using 51 because I'm counting Washington, D.C. in addition to the well-known fact of 50 states in the US.) Last year I reached 50/51 by visiting Louisiana. That left only "The Last Frontier" of the US— no, not outer space; that's the final frontier— Alaska. And now I've got plans laid in to visit Alaska in June.

We'll visit Alaska for a 5 day trip in June. We'll fly to Anchorage; it's a 5 hour flight non-stop from San Francisco. Once in Anchorage we'll rent a car and drive out to Seward, AK.

Why Seward? There's nothing to recommend that podunk little town except that it's right outside Kenai Fjords National Park. So this trip will serve two bucket list items: getting me to 51/51 states and adding another national park on my national park bucket list. It'll be national park number 53 out of 63. We'll spend a few days visiting the park, both on foot— we'll hike to a glacier!— and by boat, where we'll see more glaciers.

One thing that's struck me as we've made our bookings is how expensive everything is in Alaska. Decent hotels in Anchorage start above $300/night and go up from there. (We're staying one night in Anchorage after a late evening flight.) Rental cars are $200/day. And no, these are not last-minute prices; I was booking 7 weeks ahead. I tried dates in July and August to sanity-check if we'd just chosen the wrong time to visit, but no, Alaska's always expensive.

"What's our alternative?" I asked myself rhetorically multiple times as I choked on the prices. "The only alternative is we don't go." So we'll pay the price to complete our all-the-states bucket list. And notch one more national park.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

AFAIK, everything is more expensive in Alaska. In some areas, unfathomably so. Low supply and high transportation costs for most things result in that. A bit like here in HI, actually!

[canyonwalker]

Yeah, I've heard plenty of times that things like food are way more expensive in Alaska, like 3x the price in the continental US. It makes sense with how food isn't grown/produced there and must be shipped in via long supply chains. It wasn't clear to me that applies to everything in Alaska. Plus, commerce has gone global. "It costs 3x because of transportation costs" seems like an excuse from 50 years ago when so much of everything nowadays is shipped in from thousands of miles away. Stores in California sell produce from Mexico even though the same fruit can be grown locally. Clothes, electronics, and appliances routinely come from Asia. Cars are priced similarly whether they've arrived on a truck from Detroit or a container ship from Germany, Japan, or South Korea. Thus some of the pricing seems like gouging.