Budget Breakdown for Two Weeks in Alaska

To quote the legendary Dwight Schrute, “welcome to the no-spin zone.” I’m not here to sugarcoat anything for you, or to try to prove that my trip was cheaper/more lavish than it actually was. Here we have cold, hard numbers with some of my opinions sprinkled in. The honest truth is that a trip to Alaska is expensive. There are ways that I could have saved some money (we’ll get to that), but you have to know when reading this and/or planning your own trip that visiting Alaska national parks is going to cost you significantly more than almost any other national park trip.

This budget breakdown shows exactly what I spent on my visit to Anchorage, Denali National Park, Kenai Fjords National Park, and Wrangell St. Elias National Park. You can find the full itinerary for this trip here. This was a combo solo/non-solo trip where I visited and stayed with my brother in Anchorage, while traveling around Alaska on my own during his work days.

Did you know that this is part of a series? read more about Alaska here!

I’ve broken my budget down into three main categories: transportation, lodging, and activities, and we’ll also discuss food. I’m showing you exactly what I spent, along with what I might do differently next time (and there will 100% be a “next time”). Alright, let’s get into it.

Transportation

Plane Tickets: $417.10
Delta Baggage Fees: $50.00
Car Rental: $1,745.95
Seward Parking: $10.00
Wrangell Mountain Air Flight: $279.50
Gas: $167.66
TOTAL: $2,670.21

I didn’t shop around for plane tickets because I had a Delta gift card to spend. The gift card brought the price down, and then I knocked it down some more with credit card points, so the cost shown is what came out of pocket (I flew out of Atlanta to Anchorage).

If that car rental price doesn’t give you sticker shock, I don’t know what will. Not only are car rentals already pricey in Alaska, but also I was just shy of turning 25 years old at my time of visit. My birthday would have cut the price by about $500. I desperately looked for a way around renting a car for the whole two weeks to no avail. Taking the train to Denali and flying to Wrangell-St. Elias from Anchorage were not more cost effective, as I had hoped, and would have added much more logistical stress to the trip. I bit the bullet and rented the car.

And speaking of flying into Wrangell--I saved money here by driving myself to Chitina and taking a shorter flight to the park. I could have bypassed this altogether by driving down McCarthy Road, but I discuss in this article about Wrangell-St. Elias why I chose not to do that. If you have the option to drive your own vehicle to Alaska, it could potentially save you thousands of dollars.

Transportation is always my most expensive category for travel, but this time it feels big. For perspective, I spent more on transportation alone for this two week trip than I spent on an entire month-long trip a year later. Yikes.

Lodging

Seward Camping 1 Night: $9.00
Denali Camping 2 Nights: $46.00
Wrangell Camping 3 Nights: $30.00
TOTAL: $86.00

If my transportation spending was exorbitantly high, by comparison my lodging price was extremely low. The main purpose of this trip (besides seeing national parks) was to visit my brother and his girlfriend, who were living in Anchorage at the time. I stayed at their apartment for most of the trip, resulting in free accommodations to offset the cost of the rental car.

With the experience I now have solo camping, I would be more comfortable dispersed camping at Wrangell-St. Elias to save the $30. Same goes for Denali, except that I would throw down money to camp at Wonder Lake again in a heartbeat! The campground is well worth the $25/night fee. And the Seward campsite was only $7, but I included the $2 that I paid for a shower: also totally worth the money.

Activities

Sunny Cove Sea Kayaking Tour: $409.28
Denali Camper Transit Bus: $50.00
Root Glacier Hiking Tour: $120.00
Kennecott Mine Tour: $28.00
Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center: $30.00
Alaska Native Heritage Museum: $24.95
TOTAL: $662.23

On other national park trips, this category often only has maybe one activity in it. The parks themselves have so much to do for free (or for the cost of entry) that I don’t usually feel the need to spend a lot of money on sightseeing.

Alaska was obviously different for me. I owe much of this to the fact that I tried a lot of new things on this trip. I do not own crampons and have no experience with ice, but wanted to walk on a glacier at Wrangell-St. Elias. The smartest and safest way for me to do that was with a guide. I wanted to kayak in the backcountry of Kenai Fjords (not Resurrection Bay)--same thing.

Alaska national parks are also far less accessible for tourism than other parks. This makes things like boat rides and bus tours more necessary than places that allow for sightseeing on your own. All of these expenses are personal preferences, and would be easy to cut out of your own trip (or pick a different option). However, they also were all activities that I couldn’t do self-supported. When I return to Alaska, I will most likely participate in guided adventures again.

I spent $173.86 on food between groceries, restaurants, and coffee shops. While I found groceries to be more expensive than the lower 48, restaurant prices didn’t seem higher than normal to me. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, because there were multiple times others bought food for me, or we split the cost, etc. so this number may not accurately reflect the food cost for a normal or solo trip to Alaska.

Overall, I spent $3,592.30 on my visit, not including souvenirs (which I did buy, but didn’t include in this total because it’s too subjective). This was by far my most expensive national parks trip to date, even with free lodging for most of it. Worth it, though. I hope this helps give you an idea of how to make your own Alaska adventure possible!