What Inquiring Parents Usually Want to Know About Our Alaska Trips

Family Time: Each day will have some downtime to allow you to spend time together as a family group. Our trips are designed for parents and guardians who want to spend virtually every moment of their vacation with their children, to learn and play together, and together experience the wonders of the last frontier.

Safety: Without a doubt, the safety of all our trip participants is top priority. Our staff will be giving your group a Safety Briefing during Orientation on your first night at the Kenai Riverside Lodge. While we cannot predict everything, we will do our best to present the group with safe, supervised and enjoyable activities for the whole family.

Hiking: Our hikes are "casual" in terms of elevation gain and difficulty. We take a stop-and-smell-the-flowers approach to hikes, where the guides look for opportunities to create activities for the children to keep them learning and interested, while also presenting information that is interesting for adults, too.

Kenai River Trips: The Kenai River is a Class II+ river experience, on a scale of I to V. We offer two different trips depending on the ages of your children. You will be advised at time of booking which trip to take with your family.

For younger children (around 6 to 8 years) our scenic two-hour float trip works best. This scenic river float trip travels through the very upper stretch of the Kenai River watershed, allowing us to view the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge from a unique point of view and search for wildlife such as moose, eagles, and bears. This float trip is appropriate for ages 6 and up, and for children over 35 pounds.

For older children (around 9 and up) a full day adventure through the Kenai River Canyon is recommended for all members of the family. This trip is scenic as well, but spends longer on the water and travels through remote stretches of the Kenai River as it flows through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. This trip spends 5 hours on the water, and stops every two hours or so for breaks as well as a hour stop for a wilderness picnic lunch. The trip finished by motoring across a huge glacier carved lake.

Each guest will be outfitted in rubber boots and a U.S. Coast Guard approved life jacket for the float. Our guides are in charge of the safety and navigation of the raft, and will share their knowledge of the river as the group floats past spawning salmon, fishermen, snow-capped mountains, and dense spruce forest. This float trip is appropriate for ages 6 and up, and for children over 35 pounds.

Kenai Fjords National Park Tour: This tour is taken on a 95-foot, 100-passenger boat. The boats are new, built in the late 1990's, and have side stabilizers for the comfort of passengers. The tour is 6-hours in duration, and takes us through some of the most beautiful and marine wildlife rich areas in Alaska. The boat has indoor seating, and outdoor standing areas for viewing and observation. Our staff will make recommendations to you the night before on what to wear so that you are properly dressed for the weather so that your entire family can spend as much time outside as possible, allowing you to be the first to spot a spouting whale or observe puffin colonies.

Our Staff: Our staff members have a great deal of experience working with both adults and children. Each guide has their own "bag-of-tricks" to keep children and adults amused and interested in our activities. Activities will change and vary to match the group's interests and ages, and will provide focus and direction for activities that are both cerebral and experiential.

Rooming Configurations: Our prices are based on double room occupancy. However, we do offer triple and quadruple occupancy discounts for families who wish to share rooms and economize. Each cabin has two beds, one single and one double. Families that have two or more rooms will be placed "next door" to each other. There are a limited amount of cabins that have three beds: two singles and one double in our larger family cabins. Please enquire about the availability of these cabins at time of booking.

Kenai Riverside Lodge: We recommend that families take our Kenai Explorer package that bases from this lodge located in Cooper Landing, Alaska. Just two hours southeast of Anchorage, the Kenai Riverside Lodge provides us with the perfect base for activities. The Lodge has small private cabins, each with two beds and a front porch. The site has a large Riverside Deck with picture perfect views of the turquoise blue Kenai River and surrounding mountains. The Riverside Deck is equipped with plenty of rocking chairs, a fire-pit for evening campfires, and a Program Lodge for educational activities and presentations. We also have a volleyball court, a ping-pong table, and a self-guided nature trail for your family to enjoy.

Age appropriate activities: Our guides and helpers will make sure to provide age appropriate activities that fit into the general intent of our trips: to provide educational, fun, hands-on learning experiences for each participant (including adults!).

Moose, caribou and bears, oh my! Alaska is a land of wilderness and wildlife, and while we may not see animals each moment, they are in our midst. We hope to view wildlife from a comfortable safe distance while traveling, during our Kenai float trip, on the boat excursion into the Kenai Fjords National Park, and while hiking. Our guides will brief and explain how to manage potential close wildlife encounters on the rare occasion that they may occur, as well as educate the group about not feeding animals and maintaining safe distances.