Taking kids to Alaska

[Txtourist]

Headed up with my wife and three boys in a couple of weeks. Boys are 11, 7 and 4. They love fishing and the outdoors. I’m going to need a rev limiter as I’d normally fish til I’m exhausted, sleep a bit and repeat.
I’ve been up a handful of times fishing, floating, getting dropped off and camping with buddies and doing a guys trip.
I’d love any advice or things you’d recommend doing or passing on with young kids. Probably spend a couple nights around Kenai at a friend’s place and maybe take a water taxi out to a camping spot from Homer or Seward.
Never done much there other than fish. I know the kids are young, but they do alright with travel and are pretty easy going, so I’m excited to get them up there.
Thanks

[BlackoutRam2500]

You are a brave man. Make sure you post pics and let us know how it goes.

I have 4 kids in that same age range myself. My wife keeps talking about getting one of those overland type trailers and camping in the Alaskan backcountry. Not gonna lie I am too chicken to do it with the crew I got. Lol

Good luck and God bless.

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk

[Phillip Fields]

Hope you have a great trip. Back in the '80s when my kids were 10 and 6, we loaded the camping gear into the car and drove from North Carolina to Alaska. It took us 2 months to make the round trip. Of the 2 months, 8 nights were spent in a motel, the rest under canvas.

[Chew]

That sounds fun. Don't get too busy to document. I had some good adventures with my 4 boys when they were young and it seems like we don't have a lot of pics/video on a lot of them because we were so busy. Will be much more important when your kids have kids.

[scubasteven25]

On your way to Seward and Homer, stop off near Portage and hike to the Byron Glacier. It's relatively smooth ground and a very short hike for kids. The ice caves should be in view now. While you're a it you could detour to Whittier and take the tunnel through the mountain. There's some more glaciers on the other side. There's whale watching tours as well and you can go watch all the grizzlies play in the Russian River with the fishermen. Have fun and stay safe.

[32drawlength]

In Seward, my boys enjoyed the Alaska SeaLife Center.
We liked visiting the Homer spit & walking around. Also can book them on a halibut charter
Lots to do there
Have fun

[Drycreek3189]

That sounds fun. Don't get too busy to document. I had some good adventures with my 4 boys when they were young and it seems like we don't have a lot of pics/video on a lot of them because we were so busy. Will be much more important when your kids have kids.

Good advice right here. I find that I don’t have nearly enough pictures of my kids as they were growing up, especially of us fishing, hunting, and camping. Go and have fun !

[Killer]

That will be an awesome trip! We went with three children in 2001; 9 months, 6 and 7 years old. Did I say how great of a wife I have!
We had a blast. I think it was Thunderbird Falls that we walked into a very neat place; went to Portage Glacier cool place also. Make sure you take the boys some where that they can see the salmon in the river spawning, my kids still talk about that. At one place the fish where so thick that their uncle grabbed one up out of the water with his bare hands.

[captainsling]

See if you can find a training camp for the dog mushers(sp?). We went on one of the training sleds with the dogs and it was amazing the drive and speed those dogs can get. They literally have to use brakes on those things to slow them down around the curves. Kids would probably enjoy it.

[coachmas]

Just got home from 7 days around Wasilla/Palmer area visiting some friends. Took the boys several days catching Silvers in the salt out of Whittier. Then chased some pinks and a few silvers starting to move in creeks around Talkeetna.

[Txtourist]

Our trip was a big hit. Probably raised the bar a bit higher than we should have, but the fish were in, and my friend was off all week and took us to a few honey holes.
Learned a few things and would recommend anyone take the trip. Mid-August is great as the crowds are way lighter than June,July.
We went by the seat of our pants, renting a car and staying at a different VRBO almost every night. The trip was Saturday morning thru Friday, with a red eye direct coming home.
We got off the plane, grabbed lunch, licenses and two days worth of groceries. We hiked up to Byron glacier which is just before the Whittier tunnel (basically a park path along a glacial creek. It got the kids pretty jacked up. We stopped a mile or so down the road to a salmon viewing area so they could see some fish, again more jacked up. From there we drove to Cooper landing/ Kenai ferry and stretched our legs and watched the sockeye jumping. Just south of the landing we took the first left and drove down to Skilak lake road. I wanted to hike a trail I like here, but there was bear in the area and a recent mauling, so we just drove down and pulled out along the road. We had an encounter with a young brown bear in the same spot in 2018. Highly recommend this as it just burnt and the views are something else, just know you have to pay attention and be prepared. https://www.kinyradio.com/news/news-...ooper-landing/
From here, we headed to the only place we had reserved before leaving home, a little old log cabin in Sterling. Kids were out cold and we had a slow morning of donuts and hot chocolate while we attempted to organize the rental car for the first of 100 times. We brought 5 sleeping bags, 3 pairs or waders and rubber sole wading boots and 4 fly rods. The assumption was if we really couldn’t find a place to stay, we could buy a tent and camp somewhere. We also use the sleeping bags to bring our fish home, but I’ll get to that later…
After stopping at Fred Meyer in Soldotna for more snacks and supplies and booking a place in Kenai for the next two nights, we met a friend who lives on the Kenai and took his boat out to catch some sockeye on a gravel bar close to his place.
We hooked a pile of salmon and handed the rods off to the boys. My 11 year old has been “chuck and duck” (look it up and get familiar with this if you want to learn to floss sockeyes) fishing for steelhead on Great Lakes tributaries.
After a couple of hours it was time to head back and clean fish and wash up the boat. My buddy has a nice vac sealer and we’d picked up a few rolls of bags at Fred Meyer so we headed to our place to pack and freeze fish. My buddy gave us a few packs of moose burger, so my wife made burgers while we sealed and froze fish. Kids were pooped, so they hung out and did screen time, while I went to Three bears in Kenai and grabbed more vac bags and groceries for the next day.
Monday we met on my friend Jason’s dock at 5:30 to fish silver salmon from his boat for a few hours as the sun came up (prime time). We used 3.5”plugs with sardine fillets tied to them and cured salmon eggs on 2-0 snelled hooks with a spin and Glo. Bait fishing for silvers had opened just a few hours earlier and they were on fire. We lost a ton of fish, but we were back at the dock cleaning 2 fish per person limits by 8 am.
I was dying to go back and shore fish sockeyes again and then chase big rainbow trout, but ultimately it was a family trip, so we ran back to our rental, packed fillets, made a picnic lunch and set out for the Homer spit, 90 or so miles away.
We stopped at Ninilchick and watched some halibut charter boats launch in the surf and then drove on to the spit while the kids slept in the back seat recovering from the mornings fishing.
We wandered around Homer and ate our picnic on the beach, grabbed some ice cream and headed back hoping fish a bit more.
We got back around six, ended up just cooking a silver filet and playing with the kids. We booked a night at the Aspen inn Soldotna since our vrbo freezer was over full and they have a walk in freezer for fish and game. Took it easy Tuesday, it was drizzling on and off, so we shore fished while the kids played in the city park and hotel pool. My oldest and I cleaned a limit of sockeye and released a stack of nice reds. Around 5, my oldest and in ran back to Jason’s for moose steaks and more silver fishing while my wife and the younger boys swam.
Skies cleared and the sun came out, so we dried out, but the fish shut down.
Around 9 the sun went behind the trees on the bank and the dollies and trout that were robbing our bait stopped and the silvers were hammering the baits.
My 11 year olds arms were jelly and he lost about 3 fish for each one he landed.
We came off the river around midnight, and saw a cow moose right at the dock.
We cleaned up the boat, finalized our plans for South Dakota pheasants in November and said goodbye.
Wednesday we were planning to visit a family we know up in Wasilla and take their Cessna up for some flight seeing. I got a text at Cooper landing that they were sick and headed in for covid tests, so we had to re-tool a bit.
We decided to turn right at moose pass and visit Seward for lunch and hike up to the glacier there. We did see a decent size black bear just before the glacier. The hike was a little more of a hike, but nothing bad.
At the bottom we walked across the creek so the kids could play with the ice coming downstream. They were set on bringing the ancient ice home with us.
From there my wife really wanted to drive through the tunnel to Whittier. It’s a one way tunnel that switches direction every hour or so. Whittier is a one horse town, kind of like a miniature version of Homer. I wanted to put the car on the ferry and ride 5 plus hours to Valdez and then drive around Glenallen down, but the ferry schedules have been reduced and we’d have to wait til Thursday, which would have been a push to get back to mid day Friday. Not to mention I had two sleeping bags of frozen vac bags of salmon in the back of the car to deal with.
After a short search we found a seafood place to keep our fish in their freezer for $8/day.
We grabbed food in Anchorage after dropping the fish off and headed for a hotel about an hour away in Wasilla. I re packed the car for the 68th time and set up the rods again for the next day. We ran up Hatcher pass in the morning and toured the old gold mine site when it opened. We all enjoyed it, and hiked up one up the valleys eating blueberries the whole way. The kids wanted to move here and try gold mining, but we kept on. Hatcher pass was great, highly recommended. Past the summit we hiked down to a river to look for trout and all we found was of berries and piles and piles of bear poop. Drove past a few small gold mining operations that looked pretty interesting.
Back on the highway, we drove up to Montana creek and heard the silvers were stacked in the Su. We had a cabin booked near there for our last night, so I knew I’d come back later and fish a bit.
We ran up to Talkeetna to show the kids around and be tourists.
After 4 we checked into our cabin and my 11 year old and I ran back down to Montana creek to catch more silvers. We landed a couple and couldn’t keep the pink salmon off the hook. My wife and the 2 younger boys hiked the upper part of the creek which was absolutely full of pinks and chum salmon spawning and spawned out.
We met back at the cabin for our last dinner in Alaska and grilled a fresh silver filet and some “reindeer” sausages. After dinner we hiked back up to see the spawning grounds. It’s pretty surreal to se the fish in the last stage of life. Gets you thinking about how short life really is.
Friday we ate up the last of our food, packed the car for the 85th time and hiked some more trials by the cabin and went down along Montana creek one last time.
From there we stopped in Wasilla for lunch, cleaned the car and packed for the flight home, pick up the fish, drove around lake hood to watch the float planes coming and going.
It’s a pretty easy trip and doesn’t cost a fortune. I’ve been up there a few times and am happy to chat with anyone planning a trip.
Next year the plan is to do a fly in for moose, so if anyone who’s read this far can share any experience I’d love to hear it.

[Txtourist]

Photos

[Txtourist]

.

[TKRanch]

Sounds like a GREAT trip! You certainly did ALOT especially with kids! Wife and I love it up there both for hunting and fishing. Kids only went on a cruise, but still had a blast! Congrats on great trip and enjoyed the write up!

[diamond10x]

This is exactly how you’re supposed to do it up there! That trip will last a lifetime for all of you.

I leave next week for our biennial moose hunt and will probably do a write up when I get back on the 28th. It’s a true DIY though not exactly a fly-in through an outfitter or charter but can still probably answer any questions about moose hunting up there.