Logistics Preparations

Once we decided to include SE destinations in our trip, it was clear we will need to either fly or sail between them. We checked out the ferry schedule for our dates but there were very few options and none of them fitted our plan. As a result we ordered our SE travel from Alaska Airlines. In general their service was excellent, though as we found out, although they use modern commercial jets, their schedule is not immune to weather problems! Careful planning is therefore recommended to allow for potential delays. In addition , about 10 weeks before our travel, they notified us about a flight cancellation, which forced out to reshuffle our plan a bit and drop our Juneau day out of the itinerary. Luckily our damage was minimal, though we did lose part of a 1-day car rental deposit, which we made without noticing the small print.

For our land-based part of the trip, we reserved our rental car through hertz.com and got very good rates and terms. Quote was ~$460 for 8 days of rental, including all insurances and taxes. The only extra we had to pay was second-driver supplement (which was annoying since in many places this in included). But we were still happy with the deal (I believe they were tourism rates, US-based rates seem to be much higher)

We reserved our lodging based on TripAdvisor and booking.com ratings and reviews. We didn't want to overspend on lodging, but wanted to be reasonably comfortable, so in most cases we went for mid-range B&Bs or simple hotels. The only exceptions were again in Gustavus and of course in Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, where lodging came as part of an all inclusive package.

Similarly, this was never intended to be a 'culinary tour', so we didn't splurge on restaurants either. That being said, we did have at least one hot meal a day in reasonable restaurants (again TripAdvisor reviews were extremely valuable). In general, we didn't have a bad meal in this trip, but no culinary heights either.