Alaska.com: Alaska's Travel Website

Alaska is huge.

Click to enlarge

If you just consider the main tourist destinations -- Southcentral, Southeast and the Interior -- there are so many things to do you could easily be overwhelmed.

Do you bike or hike? Do you fish for halibut or salmon? Do you go to the museum or do some shopping? Do you have time to drive to Valdez or into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park?

So what's on your itinerary?

• A bus ride into Denali National Park for an up-close view of Mount McKinley or to look for animals including bears, moose, caribou and wolves.

• Maybe a flightseeing trip for an even-closer look at McKinley or at the glaciers of Prince William Sound.

• A boat trip in Kenai Fjords National Park.

• A day halibut fishing in Homer or Whittier.

• A different day salmon fishing on the Kenai or Russian rivers.

• Some shopping in Anchorage at the Downtown Market and Festival, at the local galleries or at the T-shirt shops.

• A visit to see some Alaska animals at the Alaska Zoo, the Musk Ox Farm or the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

That list will probably take you more than a week to complete.

And it hasn't even scratched the surface of all the things to do in Alaska. In fact, that list doesn't include any of my must-dos on a summer weekend: bicycling, hiking, backpack-camping, kayaking, a trip to Hatcher Pass.

It just goes to prove the point that you need to plan well for a trip to the Great Land. If you must go halibut fishing and you must go flightseeing and you must see glaciers from a cruise ship, then plan accordingly.

But be sure to leave a little time open to just be.

You don't want to be so tied to a schedule that you can't stop to see the bears fishing for salmon and splashing in the Kenai River -- or some other unexpected wildlife encounter. This happened to me one summer as I was driving the Sterling Highway. I'm glad there was time to stop.

I hope this guide will help you make some choices that will help your trip to Alaska be the best it can.

-- Steve Edwards