So you want to travel to Alaska…
So you want to travel to Alaska? Are you adventurous, active, outdoorsy and can run on minimal sleep- well, Alaska is for you! Land of the midnight sun, fun was in high supply for us all summer long and rest went by the wayside! But we wouldn’t have had it any other way. One of our favorite experiences was starting a hike at 10 pm to see the sun dip below the horizon around midnight, just for sunrise to start again shortly after.
Some tips for getting your perfect Alaska placement:
We most highly recommend the Anchorage area due to it being centrally located for weekend trips in every direction. We live in a suburb called Eagle River about 20 minutes from downtown Anchorage. Located next to Chugach State park, the hiking options are endless. If you love fishing, the Kenai peninsula is a great location for summer - therapy jobs here are typically found in Soldotna or Seward. Be flexible to setting! Many travelers we have met in Alaska work in home health, SNF or acute settings! We currently work in home health (Devin) and outpatient settings (Tori).
We recommend trying to start your assignment in March or April, or earlier in the year. Most people want to start in May or June, making it tougher competition to get a placement. Especially if you are looking for team positions, be flexible on start date.
Definitely stay longer than 13 weeks. Once you are here, you’ll quickly learn that is simply not enough time to see and do everything - this state is massive! We would recommend 6 months at minimum but we really recommend going for the full year to experience every season of Alaska. There are some things you can only experience in winter: like cross country skiing, fat tire biking, exploring the backcountry ski/board scene, seeing the northern lights and the Iditarod race! Committing to a year can be scary as a traveler, but the large traveler community will quickly make Alaska feel more like home.
Book your summer excursions ahead of time! This was another thing we learned the hard way. Since Alaska is such a tourist destination a lot of the things we wanted to do were fully booked early in the season. 5 of the 8 National Parks are not accessible by road, so book any tours or travels ahead of time!
Accept that living in Alaska is not cheap! Due to extra time required for shipment, food and just about everything in Alaska is more expensive. Tours during the summer can get pretty pricey, so we accepted that our first year up here was an experience and this might not be a time of “saving.” Going into winter here, we are ready to hibernate and budget for next summer!
Have a plan to get to and from Alaska. Driving to Alaska in the winter is not typically advised, due to the long distance between service stations, but is still doable. There are car shipment options out of Washington that are commonly used (we used Tote our most recent trip back), and travelers will fly up to meet their car. On our first journey north, we opted to put one car on the ferry from Bellingham Washington and ride along- which was way more fun than anticipated! We still keep in touch with a few friends who moved up here on our boat! Hanging out in our sleeping bags while sailing past glaciers and the inside passage was pretty special. This option is pretty spendy but our combined relocation stipends helped with the majority of the expense. Other travelers will fly and rent cars, you can ask how this would figure into your pay package. We got lucky that one of our assignments included a company car so we only needed to bring one vehicle along with us initially - you might find this on some home health assignments. Since the cost of getting to and from Alaska is pricey, that is another reason to consider an extended assignment.
Everything is bigger in Alaska! The hikes are steeper, backpacking trips are breathtaking, glaciers await exploration, skiing is more adventurous and weekend getaways are endless. One of our favorite things to do is rent one of Alaska’s many public use cabins where you have to travel typically on foot, skis or by boat to access. We completed a 30 mile hike and got to spend an overnight in the most perfect cabin halfway, which was such a fun spin on a typical backpacking trip. Fishing for salmon and halibut is a regular activity so bring your appetite!
Alaska is the last frontier. You’ll quickly learn that there is a very strong sense of community here. We felt welcomed by our patients into this unique club immediately. There’s something truly magical about escaping the lower 48 and making Alaska home, even temporarily.
We’ve got a ton of weekend getaways booked this winter so follow along and maybe we can convince you to fall in love with Alaska as quickly as we did! Follow all of our journeys at @inmotion_traveltherapy and reach out with any follow up questions! Hope to see you here soon!
Tori & Devin
