20260901 Seattle to King Salmon to See Fat Bears

20260901 Tuesday, September 1, 2026; Seattle to King Salmon

We’re off to Alaska again.  This is our sixth trip to Alaska, but this will be our first to see the fat bears at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park and Denali National Park.  
Our first Alaska trip (2002) involved flying into Ketchikan and taking the Marine Highway ferry to Wrangell.  We saw a ton of black bears at the Anan Wildlife Observatory up close, and a couple of brown bears at a distance.  

Our next Alaska trip didn’t come until 2013 when we took our very first cruise vacation on the Norwegian Pearl with extended family.  Since then, we have returned to Alaska on cruise ships 3 more times (Norwegian Pearl 2017, Star Princess 2019, and Viking Orion 2024).  This trip will be a hybrid starting with flying into King Salmon in Katmai National Park to stay at the Brooks Lodge in a cabin for several days to observe the bears at Brooks Falls, and then become a Princess Cruise Tour with several days at the Princess Denali Wilderness Lodge, rail trip from Denali to Whittier, and then a cruise from Whittier to Vancouver.  

It’s not much fun getting from home to where the actual fun is, but the journey is part of the adventure.  For us, this means getting up at 3:15 a.m. to catch a 4:15 a.m. Whidbey Sea-Tac Shuttle, which drives down the length of the island, takes the Clinton to Mukilteo Washington State Ferry, and then down I-405 to arrive at Sea-Tac airport at 7 a.m.  The shuttle bus was full on this run, but it is nice to be able to try to nap on the shuttle instead of concentrating on driving through the dark and in city traffic.  

When we first committed to doing the Brooks Falls stay with sister-in-law Terri and her husband, we had wanted to drive our RV to Alaska, so we booked only flights from Anchorage to King Salmon.  But over the ensuing months, watching countless YouTube videos about RVing to Alaska, we ultimately decided to fly from Seattle to Anchorage instead of driving the RV.  This was mainly due to uncertainties of road conditions and time that needed to be budgeted to make it from Whidbey Island to Anchorage.  It could possibly be done in as little as 2-3 weeks, but that might require driving more than 8 hours a day, and we really don’t like to drive more than 4 hours a day when in the RV.  

It might have taken a month just to get to Anchorage in a sane manner.  This would have meant leaving in early August, just at the peak of crabbing and salmon fishing seasons, and when weather on the island is at its best.  So we ended up adding flights from Seattle to Anchorage, and also decided to reschedule an Alaska Denali Cruise tour that was canceled by the Covid pandemic so we could take a cruise ship back from Alaska instead of flying or driving.  

Adding the Seattle to Anchorage flight turned out to be more troublesome than if we had booked the flight originally directly from Seattle to King Salmon because for some reason, Alaska Airlines is unable to tag luggage to the final destination if it involves more than a single reservation, even if it is the same passengers, same airline, and same airport.  

So flying from Seattle to Anchorage, we had to go to the baggage claim and exit the terminal before we could recheck our baggage for our Anchorage to King Salmon flight.  This also meant we had to pay for the bags a second time, which at $35 each, adds up.  So for two checked bags, we had to pay $140 to get them from Seattle to King Salmon.  In retrospect, we wished we had gotten an Alaska Airlines Visa card before we planned this trip because the checked bags would have been free, and this one trip would have easily paid the annual Visa card fees for 2 years.  

The flights were not bad at all.  We were flying economy this trip, but the flights were just 3 hours and 1 hour in duration.  And we had almost 3 hours of layover in Anchorage, so collecting our checked bags and then having to recheck them and go back through security was not a problem.  

We met Terri and her husband John at Sea-Tac.  They were on the same flights to Anchorage and King Salmon.  They had flown in from California, where they have been hiking for the last month, logging over 250 miles and several thousand feet in elevation.  We were surprised they didn’t have holes in their shoe soles.  

Anchorage airport is thoroughly modern and sized to accommodate the millions of cruise passengers who pass through Alaska every summer season.  We had lunch in the Anchorage airport.  We are going to gradually accustom ourselves to more and more expensive food on this trip because things are just a lot more expensive in Alaska.  No more $7 lunch specials at Sonic or Dairy Queen.  We ended up splitting a pizza and beer for a $30 lunch.

While eating lunch, Terri and John had received notifications on their checked luggage, which showed that one of their bags was getting loaded onto our King Salmon flight, but the other bag was loaded onto a plane bound for Kodiak instead.  They had to contact the Alaska Airlines customer service desk and were relieved to learn that the airline had caught the error and had pulled the bag off the wrong plane and routed it back to the correct plane.  

The flight from Seattle to Anchorage was a 737-800 which sported a Disney paint job, instead of the usual smiling Eskimo.  There were no seatback entertainment screens, but they did have limited inflight Wi-Fi for streaming some entertainment and sending text messages, but internet access was $8 extra if you needed or wanted it.  

Ben watched a Super Mario Brothers Galaxy movie, which was what you’d expect from a movie like that (cute, nostalgic, dumb), but as the plane began its descent towards Anchorage, we got a real eyeful of the spectacular beauty of central coastal Alaska with many glaciers running from the mountains to the sea. 

 

The flight from Anchorage to King Salmon was also a 737, but a slightly smaller version, and it was flying half empty.  There did seem to be an unusually high percentage of toddlers and infants on this particular flight, which was noisy, but fortunately, we were many rows removed from the loudest screamers.  

In contrast to the Anchorage airport, King Salmon airport was a tiny single-gate affair where the baggage carousel and security CT scanners are on opposite sides of the same room, which is roughly the volume of a small town pharmacy store.  

Outside the airport, there is a two-lane paved road through town.  We were staying overnight in the Antlers Inn, which was about 1 city block from the airport terminal building.  We dragged our luggage along the rough shoulder of the road and then down the dirt and gravel roads to the Inn.  

The Inn is behind a Wells Fargo Bank and town mall, which looks like it houses 2 or 3 other small businesses in the same building.  There is a saloon and restaurant next to the airport, and across the street from that is a general store which has a full supermarket, as well as fishing tackle, hardware, and convenience foods.  

Gas is nearly $9/gallon in King Salmon.  Right next to the Antlers Inn is a bar with pool tables, local color, and no food.  

The Antlers Inn had a two-bedroom apartment that we rented for the night.  It had two identical bedrooms with pairs of twin beds, in addition to a large living room and a single-wide mobile home-style kitchen.  There was a stacked washer/dryer in the bathroom.  They did provide 4 sets of bath towels and basic motel soap and shampoo.  While definitely “rustic”, it was serviceable and probably the best accommodations available in King Salmon.

We had dinner at the Sockeye Saloon, which, if you could overlook the dead flies on the window sill, was a decent restaurant with good service and food.  We had burgers and beer.  

Janet and I split a cheeseburger with fries and beer for a $36 dinner.  From there, we picked up some yogurt and granola bars for tomorrow’s breakfast at the supermarket.  

After a long day of travel, we were all looking forward to showers and getting to bed early.  Tomorrow, we need to meet the van for the water taxi to Brooks Lodge at 8 a.m. at the Sockeye Saloon.  

20260622 Monday, June 22, 2026 - Reykjavik to Whidbey Island

20260622 Monday, June 22, 2026 - Reykjavik to Whidbey Island

As far as return flight schedules go, today’s looked pretty easy.  Our direct flight from Reykjavik to Seattle departed at 12:45pm so we had a hotel pick-up at 9 a.m. scheduled by Viking’s transportation team since we had booked our extension and flights through Viking.  Viking had originally had us scheduled to fly from Reykjavik to either London or Frankfurt and then on to Seattle because the only air carriers with lie-flat business class seats to Seattle had to come out of mainland Europe.  But we discovered that Alaska Airlines had recently begun direct flights from Reykjavik to Seattle since acquiring planes with sufficient range and capacity through their acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines.  The 737-8 Max aircraft had the range but were configured with domestic business class seating which reclines about 15º and has calf rests.  Since this was a daylight flight headed westward, and the flight time was less than 8 hours, we figured we would be better off with the direct flight.  Traveling to London, Frankfurt, or Paris would have added many more hours to our total travel time and gotten us home later.

There was plenty of time to have breakfast and get our teeth brushed before having to head to the airport.  

Iceland Parliament Hotel’s “Over Easy” eggs, not so easy.

Avocado Benedict

The transfer van arrived early, so the hotel front desk rang us on the telephone to let us know.  There were a total of 6 Viking Neptune passengers headed to the airport at the same time and for the same flight. 

 
The Reykjavik International Airport is actually in Keflavik, so its international call sign is KEF.  It is almost an hour’s drive from downtown Reykjavik.  We only encountered light traffic, but the weather had turned for the worse overnight, and it was raining steadily as we headed to the airport.  It was quite the contrast to the beautiful sunny weather we had for our Golden Circle tour yesterday.  It was almost like Iceland was crying because it was sad to see us going home.  

After our airport drop-off, we had to wait about a half hour before we could check our bags.  KEF airport is a bit basic and rudimentary around the boarding gate areas.  These branch off the main hub, which is like a mall department store encouraging travelers to spend more money before they leave Iceland. 

The boarding gate areas are generally too small with inadequate seating, so when a flight gets ready to board, there is severe congestion.  

Our boarding gate wasn’t so much of a boarding gate as a holding area for a shuttle bus, which drove us across a taxiway to our jet, which was parked on the tarmac with cargo planes.  Being the new kid in town, Alaska Airlines obviously drew the short straw on gate assignments.  Alaska Airlines also did not have access to any business class lounges in the airport.

The plane did not have seat-back entertainment screens, but the plane did have free in-flight Wi-Fi so passengers could text and surf on their own devices.  The seat backs did have a USB-C power port that was easily accessible on the seat back as well as a fold-down device holder that could just fit an iPad without a case. There was also 220VAC on the front of the center console.  Having learned from our experience on the outbound Lufthansa flights, we carried an AC power brick and both USB-A and USB-C cables so we could keep our devices charged during the flight.  

This direct Reykjavik to Seattle flight was very interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that because of our high northern latitude and westward flight path, we will be staying nearly stationary in space as the Earth rotates beneath us and we drift southward.  The plane will be going fast enough to offset the Earth’s rotation, so we will arrive in Seattle about the same time on the clock as when we depart Reykjavik.  The actual flight time is 7-1/2 hours, but we will be crossing 8 time zones as we head westward.

The second interesting thing is the flight path took us over Greenland, Baffin Island, and parts of the Northwestern Passages, including the northern part of Hudson’s Bay during the middle of the daylight.  This provided the opportunity to see some spectacular scenic views of these areas, which had mountains, fjords, glaciers, ice flows, and icebergs.

Iceberg spotted from 38,000 ft altitude, wandering between Iceland and Greenland.

Halfway between Iceland and Greenland, our pilot spotted a huge iceberg in the middle of the north Atlantic.  It was the size of a small mountain, and visible from our 38,000ft altitude.  That’s the sort of ice berg that sunk the Titanic.

We were very fortunate that the cloud cover broke over the eastern coast of Greenland as we crossed, giving us breathtaking views of some of the most amazing glaciers and mountains you can imagine.  

As we flew further inland over Greenland’s massive ice sheet, the clouds closed in, obscuring Greenland until the clouds opened just enough for us to get a glimpse of the western edge of Greenland’s rapidly retreating ice sheet. 

Greenland’s ice sheet is the second-largest ice mass on Earth, covering about 80% of Greenland’s land mass.  That is three times the area of Texas.  It is up to a mile thick and holds 10% of the world’s fresh water.  If it were to melt entirely, sea levels would rise by over 20’. 

To the countless scientists who have been studying and recording data on the ice sheet for hundreds of years, climate change and its potential impacts on life on planet Earth are undeniable.  As much as political demagogues find it expedient to deny science and reality, it is awe-inspiring to actually see the effects on this ice sheet, even from 38,000 ft in the air.

The clouds closed in again, obscuring the western coastline.

The clouds opened up again over central Baffin Island, the second-largest island in the world.  It was a rare opportunity to see both the world’s largest and second-largest islands in a matter of a couple of hours.  The landscapes and sea scapes are absolutely otherworldly.  It is hard to imagine scraping out a living in these areas where the polar bear is the undisputed king of the land and seas.  We didn’t spot any polar bears from our 38,000’ cruising altitude, but there were certainly out there.  

Nettilling Lake, Baffin Island

Duke of York Bay, Southampton Island, Northwest Passages of Hudson’s Bay

Nunavut, Canada

The landscapes across much of Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta are wild and covered with millions of lakes and streams, many of which are frozen.  It gave the impression of the surface of a giant saturated sponge.  It wasn’t until we approached Edmonton that the landscapes took on the more solid look that we associate with continental North America.

As we crossed the prairies of southern Alberta and the Canadian Rockies, it began to look a lot like home, particularly when the beautifully symmetric snow-peaked Mt. Baker came into view.  

Mt Baker

Seattle as we headed south over the Bellevue and the Eastside.

We flew south over the Cascade foothills before making a U-turn over Olympia to make our final approach into Seattle-Tacoma Airport.  We had beautiful clear weather with a very smooth ride all the way until we began descending over the Cascade foothills, where it got a little bumpy in the last half hour.  

The new international arrivals terminal at SeaTac is modern and comfortable, as well as efficient.  There is an extremely long escalator both up and then back down over the pedestrian overpass that connects the international arrivals terminal to the main terminal complex that is like a stairway to Heaven, and then back down to Earth.

We pretty much breezed through picking up our luggage and then customs and passport control thanks to Global Entry.  There were huge lines backed up at customs and passport control which we simply bypassed walking past a gauntlet of overhead cameras, and then an agent who visually confirmed we matched the biometric data associated with our Known Traveler profiles through our NEXUS membership, and waved us through.  

We were able to catch an earlier shuttle bus, saving us an hour and a half of waiting.  There was a short but beautiful ferry ride from Mukilteo to Clinton.  There was a whale watching boat and sailboat that were watching a lone whale out in front of Mukilteo’s waterfront to the east.  It was too far from the ferry route to see any more than just the rate but unmistakable spout of a whale breaking surface before diving again.  There were no tail flukes or dorsal fins visible at this distance.  

We were surprised by the summer weather with temperatures in the upper 70’s and clear skies.  It was a bit of a shock coming from Svalbard and Iceland, but a welcome sort of shock.  

When we got home, Ben changed into short sleeves and shorts, and we celebrated our return with Price by making a trip to Dairy Queen.  

This was quite an enjoyable trip.  We did travel previously with Mark and Jan to the Galapagos and with Doug and Sandy to Florida, but this was the first trip that all six of us traveled together on an ocean-going cruise ship.  We all have our different styles and interests, and seeing and sharing those around the dinner tables and activities on the cruise ship adds a whole new dimension to the value of traveling the world with friends. 

This itinerary, which started in Oslo, took the scenic train across inland Norway to Bergen, and then through the inside passages of Norway’s northern coast, then across the Arctic Circle to Svalbard and on to Iceland, features some of the most spectacular scenic cruising of any of our prior travels.  Even though we had previously done a Norway cruise with Princess, the inside routes that Viking was able to take make a shocking difference in the experience.  

While Svalbard and Antarctica had some similarities, both are strikingly unique in their own ways.  We were able to get much farther north (78ºN) in Svalbard than Antarctica (64.8ºS). 

There is much more snow and ice in Antarctica, and the water and climate are also much colder in Antarctica thanks to the warm Gulf Stream’s influence on the North Atlantic.  The massive frozen land mass of the Antarctic continent and lack of warming ocean currents make the Antarctic much colder and harsher than the Arctic.

This makes the Antarctic Circle much harder to access since it is closed off by ice flows and sea ice that are impassible to all but dedicated icebreakers for most of the year, and even polar expedition vessels like the Viking Polaris and Octantis cannot guarantee achieving a crossing of the Antarctic Circle when they attempt to do so on select extended late-season sailings.  

Most Antarctica itineraries concentrate on giving passengers the maximum potential opportunity to see wildlife and go ashore in Antarctica where conditions are more certain.  The sailings that attempt to cross the Antarctic Circle in February or March are sold out until 2029 and these are 14-day itineraries that are about $5000 per person more expensive than the standard 10-day Antarctica cruises. 

The most certain way of getting across the Antarctic Circle and touching land is to fly into Wolf’s Fang Runway at 71ºS on a private charter flight out of South Africa or McMurdo Station at 77.8ºS on a flight out of New Zealand.  For us, it’s something we don’t really have to check off on our bucket lists with so much of the rest of the world to still explore.

We look forward to being home bodies for a while during the beautiful summer months we have at home.  Our next trip will be a Viking River Cruise in Portugal in the fall after the fishing seasons end and rains begin to fall again.