I Finally Went to Alaska!!

Those words just seem so surreal right now, even as I’m typing this, looking over my pictures, and reviewing my credit card statement. I finally went to Alaska.

After months and months of waiting, planning, saving, having our hearts broken and then finding the silver lining…my friend Ashley and I went to Alaska.

There are going to be a handful of detailed articles coming out in the next few weeks about this trip, so forgive me if I save the minutiae for the corresponding articles.

Back in the spring of 2021 (March, to be exact), I found a deal for $200ish roundtrip tickets to Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, to be fair, Fairbanks wasn’t exactly on my list of places that I was dying to go to…nor was it the first place I imagined visiting after the summer craziness of work.

I’d like to take a second and pause…and wish that everyone had as adventurous a friend as I do. Ashley and I had been wanting to take another trip together, but none of the deals I found matched what we had envisioned or worked with our schedules.

Until I saw Fairbanks.

I immediately reached out to Ashley to see if she wanted to go on an Alaska adventure with me.

Within 5 minutes after her response, the flights were booked.

wall art map of alaska with "home sweet home" written within the map, a heart locating fairbanks - I finally went to alaska

I Finally Went to Alaska: Rental Car Mayhem

Have you tried to rent a car recently? If you have, let’s get together and vent.

If you haven’t, let me fill you in.

Finding a rental car right now is a total nightmare, if you’re trying to go through the “usual” channels.

Check out this article with more information about the car rental shortage from the Los Angeles Times.

For weeks leading up to our adventure in Alaska, I scoured the internet for a rental car. There were literally no rentals available anywhere in Fairbanks from any of the major (and even minor) rental car agencies.

And even though we were flying into Fairbanks, I started checking for rentals in Anchorage and other major cities along the coast.

But I kept striking out.

Over and over.

What in the world were we going to do? Although Lyft and Uber (and taxis) have a small presence in Fairbanks, we were going to need the freedom of a vehicle in order to do all of the activities that we wanted.

How could we hunt for the northern lights in an Uber?

Or road trip in a taxi?

Fast forward to a few weeks prior to our departure, and I remembered that my brother used an app called Turo to rent a car for a few hours.

Turo is an app where car owners can rent out their personal vehicle by the day, week, or hour. Think of it as the AirBnB equivalent for car rentals.

I downloaded the app and started to peruse the listings.

To my instant relief, I saw that there were a LOT of vehicles that were available during the time we would be in Alaska.

My relief quickly dimmed as I looked at the prices. Ashley and I needed a car with 4-wheel drive, and preferably a larger vehicle. We weren’t sure where our hunting for the northern lights was going to take us, and we needed the option to possibly sleep in the vehicle.

We were also going to be spending a lot of time on the road, and having a car large enough to keep us comfortable was essential.

I finally sucked it up and booked us an SUV for $160/day. Woof.

But – we had wheels!

Chevy SUV parked next to picturesque lake in Alaska - I finally went to Alaska — This is the cleanest the car was during our road trip adventures…

I Finally Went to Alaska: Adventures Galore

I’ll be honest – I didn’t go to Alaska to relax.

And neither did Ashley.

When we travel together, we go hard. We plan out activities and fill our days with new things to do, adventures to have, and drives to take.

Our first big adventure we were planning on ended up getting canceled (thanks to a virus), so we scrambled last-minute to find a suitable replacement.

And boy did Ashley find one!

I’ll be going into more detail on later posts about each activity, but we managed to:

See the Northern Lights