4 Takeaways from the Alaska 2024 Summer Season

Jennie shares her four takeaways from working as a Tour Director in Alaska in the 2024 season as well as a preview of episodes coming for the rest of 2024 and 2025.

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Music credits:  Largo Montebello, by Domenico Mannelli, CC.

Transcript

Jennie Flaming: 0:04

Welcome to the Alaska uncovered podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co host and full time husband, Jay and I bring you accurate, helpful and entertaining information about Alaska, travel and life in Alaska, before we start the episode, we would like to thank our Patreon members for making this podcast possible. You can join them at the link in the show notes. We are so grateful for your support of Independent podcasts. Enjoy the show you Hi, everyone. Jennie here, so today is going to be a short solo episode. It's early October, and the 2024 Alaska travel season is wrapping up, and so similar to what I did around this time last year, I wanted to share a few reflections on this travel season and what that may mean for you, if you're planning a trip this winter or in 2025, so, or any time in the future. So I think there's a couple big things, I think four, actually, that I want to talk about as big takeaways. And one of them is kind of similar to one that I talked about last year. So you can go back and listen to my 2023, season rap, if you're interested in that. But for this season, as I was reflecting on it, there were really four things that stick out, stood out to me that I wanted to share with you. So the first one is about seeing late summer season auroras or Northern Lights. So this summer, I was on tour for the last two weeks of August and the first week of September, which is later than I did tours last summer. And I had a lot of guests who had booked at that time because they really wanted to see the northern lights, and a lot of them did. So that is kind of exciting. So I'll tell you a little bit about the ones that had success, what they did, and also a couple other reflections on it. So first of all, the weather in late summer in Alaska is pretty cloudy and rainy in general. Now that doesn't mean it's going to be cloudy every day or rain every day, but compared to the middle of winter, it's definitely a wetter and cloudier time of year where you can see the aurora. So just keep that in mind. As far as your expectations in general, I would say that this time of year you have a chance because it's dark, but if you want a trip where you're really planning around the northern lights, I would recommend either just staying in Fairbanks and possibly Denali for your whole trip, or going into the Yukon or planning a trip in the winter. So if you're going to other places, you definitely have a chance, but just know it is not as good of a chance as being up in the interior, both because of the position of being further north, but also because those are drier places. So my guests who saw the Aurora on my tours were the ones who got up every hour in the middle of the night and went out and looked one of my tours. The guests sort of self organized among like eight people. It was really fun. And they took turns getting up and then knocking on the doors of the others, which I thought that was a great strategy, and it really worked for them. All of them saw the Aurora on a couple different nights, including one night when it was fairly cloudy, one night where people didn't see it, except between like two and three in the morning. But this group did because they had made some new friends and taken turns getting up. So that was really cool. I was really thrilled for them. My colleague and I used the coach to take a time lapse a couple of times and caught an aurora on the time lapse camera. So that was kind of fun. Everyone got to see that one night, some of the group did book an aurora tour, and that night, they had a wonderful time. They sat by a bomb. On Fire and had a great time, but they didn't see an aurora that night. So it's with the Aurora The important thing is to get out and look a lot. There's really no substitute for that, anywhere, anytime. One other thing I wanted to mention is I had a couple of colleagues who saw auroras from their cruise ship in September, which is pretty awesome, and that is an amazing treat. I have had clients who want to book a September cruise for that reason, and I would just caution you about that, because that's definitely something special that you can't count on, and there are some downsides to late season cruises, which I talked about in September in the episode I did about shoulder season cruising. So if you're considering that, definitely go back and listen to that. So that's the first one chance to see an aurora. Best chance is to just go out and look a lot. Okay, number two is just hotels in general. So I spend, you know, several weeks in hotels in Alaska each year, usually six or seven weeks in different hotels. And I have found that people do great with hotels in Alaska when they have appropriate expectations and when they don't, they have a really hard time. So most hotels in Alaska are really kind of struggling with all you know, they do a really amazing job for being in rural areas with mostly new staff every season, you know, they open and are, like, fully booked with all new people. And I am overall, really impressed with what people do in hotels here, but it's very different from other places. So there are no fancy hotels in Alaska. Hotels in Alaska are really expensive. So I think especially for the price, people are expecting something more luxurious than what they get. So what I would tell you about Alaska hotels is that they're very expensive. They are generally clean and comfortable, and you can read reviews to make sure that's true, but they're not going to be fancy. The Wi Fi is going to be fiddly. They may or may not have a TV. It may or may not work. The the decor might be very dated. So try to just understand that it's not you. It's in this location. It is just too expensive to have luxurious hotels for the most part, and the prices are high because of demand, and so just try to lean into that, and just be aware that, especially for the price, you're gonna get a more basic, But probably clean and comfortable hotel stay. So just keep that in mind. The third thing that I wanted to talk about is weather. And I know I talk about weather quite a bit, but in this Alaska tour season, in 2024 there was a wildfire that closed Denali National Park for about 10 days, there was extremely hot and dry weather. On my tours this season, I experienced temperatures as hot as 88 degrees. Experienced that in Denali National Park and in Fairbanks. I also experienced a little bit of wet snow in August and in the mid 30s. So it really when people tell you that the weather is unpredictable, you really need to take that to heart. I'm thinking about on my last tour, which was the first couple days of September, we were in Homer, and I told the guests that we were going on an all day boat tour from Homer, which I should do an episode about, because it was really wonderful. We went over to Seldovia, which I would highly recommend, but with a few with a few caveats, but I'll probably do an episode about that sometime this fall. Um, but yes. So anyway, we were going out on this boat tour, and it was all day, and the forecast was, I don't even remember what the forecast was for. It was kind of all over the place. And I told the guests. I was like, Listen, no matter what the forecast is, no matter what the weather is, in the morning, you have to be ready for rain and you have to be ready for sun, because those are both possible, and you are going to be suffering if you're not ready for rain and it rains, especially on a boat tour, and you are going to be suffering if you don't have any lighter layers. I. Sunglasses if the sun comes out. All right. So in the morning, we went down to the dock, and it was absolutely pouring rain. And you know, remember that I'm from Seattle and I've lived in southeast Alaska, I was like, wow, this is a lot of rain. So it rained very heavily. We were very wet. It was very steamy in the boat, but everybody had a rain jacket, and they did great. About two hours into the tour, the rain lightened up, and then about an hour after that, the sun came out, and it was not hot. It was like in the mid 50s, but it felt really hot in the sun after that. And so it was kind of funny, because the guests were like, how did you know it was gonna be sunny? I was like, I didn't know. I just, you know, know how fast the weather can change and how unpredictable it is. So you know, that can be kind of annoying, because you're gonna be carrying around things that you might not need or might not need all day. But let me just tell you that is the key to having a good experience is being ready for kind of any weather that is possible during the month or the season that you're visiting Alaska. And try also the weather doesn't matter as much as you think. Like, this was a wonderful tour, and people loved it. People loved it even when it was pouring rain. You know, it was wonderful that the sun came out, but the rain didn't interfere at all with our day. Except if you hadn't been ready for it and didn't have a rain jacket, then it would have been really miserable. So try not to worry about the weather. Try to understand that your guides are not going to know what the weather is going to be, they're going to tell you what I'm telling you, which is to be ready for anything. So try to take that to heart. So the last thing I wanted to talk about today, number four, is embracing downtime. And you know, this summer, I did some longer tours that were two weeks long, and I really encouraged people to take advantage of time. We didn't have anything scheduled, to just rest or to just go outside and experience something in whatever community we were in. And I really tried to do that myself. You know, when you work as a tour director, there's kind of a bottomless amount of like paperwork and reconfirming things and preparing for the next day. And while it's important to do that, I really challenged myself to keep that to a specific amount of time that seemed reasonable, and then to take advantage of those breaks to get outside or to just read a book or take a nap or go to bed early or try a new restaurant or a new trail, and that really, really helped make it a good season for me, and I'd really encourage you to do that on your trip as well. Not it's not all about how much you can see and how much you can cram in, but making sure you give some yourself some time to just be and to really just take in what Alaska is, because that is a really important part of a visit to Alaska, in my opinion. And you know, many of my guests say that as well, they'll often say, you know, that night that we spent when we were just down at the beach, just looking at the sunset, you know, that was one of the highlights of my tour. And I think so it's not just me feeling that way. So take that from other visitors as well. So those are my four things advice about late season, Northern Lights, viewing expectations around hotels, dealing with weather and embracing the downtime. I also just so you know too now that I'm starting to record again for this winter and for 2025, new podcast episodes. Now that I'm at that point in the year with the season winding down, I'm changing up my questions that I'm asking all of my guests. So instead of a restaurant a favorite month and favorite thing to do, I'm now going to ask people just two questions. One, is favorite restaurant? Because that has Jay and I both agree that that has led to a wonderful catalog of restaurant recommendations from locals. So we want to keep that going. But the other thing I'm going to add in is asking my guests what they wish visitors knew before visiting Alaska. So I'm really looking forward to hearing people's answers to that question, and I feel like things about the month and things to do you know that often gets answered throughout the episode. So I'm gonna just kind of let that come up organically and just change those i. End of the episode questions. So we have some amazing interviews and episodes lined up for you. I'll take this opportunity to tell you a little more about that too. So in addition to our last week of every month is always going to be our Patreon subscriber only episode. And I just really want to encourage you to join us and listen to those episodes. Those are just with Jay and I talking about different topics, and they're fun to record. We love we we love sharing those episodes with our subscribers so and the support of our subscribers is really, really important to keeping this podcast going every week. So we're so grateful to our current Patreon subscribers, and it's only $5 a month. So if you want to join them, please do that. The link is always in the show notes, and thanks for your support. We're also going to have, just like last week, the episode that I had for you with Rob Taylor. We are going to have the first episode of every month be a traveler stories episode. So that will be an interview with a traveler who has visited Alaska in the last year for the first time. Or in some cases, like Rob, it may not be the first time, but it might be a different kind of experience. Or as it was with Rob bringing his family for the first time. So we look forward to bringing those to you, and then we have lots of wonderful episodes coming up with guests throughout the fall and winter and all of 2025 so we are looking forward to bringing those to you. Thank you so much for listening. Having you here to share Alaska with every week is an absolute highlight for Jay and I, so thank you so much and see you next week. Bye For now. You