There aren't many places in the U.S that you can visit and get lucky enough to see so much wildlife as you do in Alaska. Whether you go on a cruise or fly into an Alaska city to explore the state you are sure to find a wonder of wildlife that is guaranteed to amaze.

Many people choose to take a cruise through the inside passage.  This is a fine choice but at the same time, you are more confined and may not get to see quite as much as if you fly and roam. However, I would say that either choice is better than none at all. Personally I can only speak from experience about a fly-drive experience since I've not cruised the area.

Anchorage is a good starting place for the Southcentral part of the state. From there you can visit the Kenai Peninsula, the famous Denali Park, the inside passage, or you can head up to Fairbanks. Anchorage is of course Alaska's largest city in which you can find nightlife, shopping, and sightseeing. I took a small "crop-hopper" from Anchorage to a little town called Talkeetna.  I'm not sure who goes there other than locals but I was going to visit my mother who was living in a nearby town at the time. On the very short flight I was fortunate enough to see a pod of belugas swimming through Cook Inlet! That was the beginning of a wonderful trip.

I didn't do much in Talkeetna other than visit with my mother and hunt for bears that I didn't find. However we did take a wonderful flight-seeing tour around the area. We got to see some beautiful mountains and cool craters and then happened upon a herd of sea lions. As we were flying past the sea lions we spotted a huge walrus!

After a couple of days visiting my mother in Talkeetna, we went to Kenai to stay for several days. That was a really good central location for other activities that we wanted to do such as whale watching, visiting Homer and Seward, bear watching, and general tourist activities. It was a short drive to both Homer and Seward. Homer is a huge fishing town. There we partook of some of the wonderfully delicious seafood caught in the area. In Seward we signed up for a simple and inexpensive bird watching tour for around $25 (several years ago). Little did we know what we would get to see for that small amount of money. On the way out to Gull Island we saw several Orcas and even a couple of humpback whales. That of course made Gull Island a minor attraction in comparison. We also got to see an otter.

While we were in Seward we came across a kiosk selling trips for bear watching. We proptly signed up! On this trip we took a float plane over to Katmai Island. On the way we saw several gray whales. Once to our destination our planes anchored to a barge that was just off shore. We deboarded the planes and stepped onto the barge for instructions on how the rest of the day would go. We were taken on small johnboats up to the shore and on our way up we noticed a mother bear leading her cubs away from us. That was fine because as we got situated on the shore near the ends of the river, the bears began coming in a good numbers for their morning salmon fishing. We spent the entire day watching bears catching fish. It was amazing because there were no barriers between us and the bears aside from the river between us, which they were obviously capable of crossing. Talk about an adrenaline rush!

While in the Peninsula we also took a Fjords tour. It was an incredibly beautiful sight. The Fjords are glaciers that run along the Kenai peninsula just south of Seward. Being a native Floridian who had never even seen snow besides the one time it "snowed" in my memory, the glaciers were yet another amazing sight. After the Fjords tour we decided to take our own little excursion to Exit glacier, which is accessible by car. Very cool indeed.

After so much excitement, it was about time to head back to Anchorage for our trip home. We decided to take a leisurely drive back along Seward highway and that just topped it all off. We saw moose alongside the road but we also just generally enjoyed the view of the mountains.

There are so many wonderful things to see in Alaska and www.alaska.com is a great resource for information on those things. The thing is that if you only have 7-10 days you will not likely get to see more than a couple of cities, and smaller ones at that. There is just so much to do that I couldn't imagine being able to make it long distances and really enjoy each stop unless I had several weeks.  I still long to go to Fairbanks and to cross the arctic circle but perhaps that will be on the next trip.