Things to Do in Glacier Bay National Park: A First-Time Visitor’s Guide

We set off on our Alaskan adventure early one Saturday morning in June, aiming to visit the eight national parks scattered across the largest state in America.

Our first destination is Glacier Bay National Park near Juneau, followed by a stop in Anchorage to rent a car for the rest of our trip. After months of planning and hours spent pouring over maps and guides, we’re finally off! ✈️

This diary-style travelogue—a 7-part blog series—shares all the adventures from our trip of a lifetime. Join us as we recap the unforgettable journey… 21 days, 8 national parks, and 1 Great Alaskan Road Trip!

(#1) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Goodbye Service, Hello Adventure in Glacier Bay
(#2) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Dog Sledding, Ice Climbing, & Sea Kayaking in Kenai Fjords
(#3) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Exploring America’s Largest National Park
(#4-5) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: ‘Alone’ in Gates of the Arctic & Kobuk Valley
(#6) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Camping with Bears in Katmai Nat’l Park
(#7) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Bus Tours, Scenic Hikes, and Denali's 30% Club
(#8) Alaska Road Trip Diaries: Stunning Coastal Scenery and Bears in Lake Clark Nat’l Park

Planning your own Alaskan adventure? Get our complete itinerary and Alaska Travel Guide here!

Table of Contents Show

Day 1: Travel to Gustavus, Alaska

The day is finally here! 😱 Our Great Alaskan Road Trip is kicking off early with a 3:20 a.m. wake-up call, followed by three flights from Dallas, Texas, to Gustavus, Alaska.

After finalizing our luggage for the trip—two carry-on backpacks each—we hop in an Uber to catch our first flight to Seattle and a second to Juneau. By the time we get off our second flight, we’re looking forward to a long layover and hoping to get some food before a final, 30-minute flight to Gustavus.

We deboard and are surprised to walk into the small, 5-gate Juneau airport. We make our way to the sole restaurant at the far end of the building and, putting our bags down at an empty table in the cafe, look up for our first glimpse of the 49th state.

It’s quintessential Alaska.

The skies are overcast. Juneau’s large airport windows highlight foggy mountains and thousands of lush pine trees. Helicopters and float planes take off from every direction.

We spend our layover eating burgers, watching a movie (47 Ronin with Keanu Reeves, if you’re curious!), and listening to an audio novel. Finally, it’s time to board our final flight to Gustavus, which requires just 15 short minutes of flying time. We’re officially on our way to National Park #1!

As we land in Gustavus, Jon notes for the first but definitely not the last time, “I don’t have any service.” Deplaning on the tarmac, we find an even smaller airport than Juneau's. (It’s just one gate.) We board the green school bus in the parking lot and head toward Glacier Bay Lodge.

As we’re pulling away from the airport, one of the lodge employees asks who among us has Verizon cell coverage. When a handful of us raise our hands, she promptly shares that we’ll receive zero—yes, zero—bars during our stay. We may get some WiFi in the main lobby of Glacier Bay Lodge, but that’s it.

“But you’re not here for WiFi anyway,” she quickly follows up…

And, of course, she’s right. We didn’t bring our work gear with us, and it's a good thing as it seems that a trip to Alaska makes being unplugged less of a choice and more of a requirement.

Our bus ride doubles as a town tour of Gustavus, with 600 permanent residents, as we pass the town’s one gas station, one coffee shop, two restaurants (one of which is run by the local high school and offers pizza on Friday nights only), and one liquor store (where you ask for a general type of alcohol and get whatever they’ve got). We also pass the Gustavus grocery store called “ToshCo,” which is run by a gentleman named Tosh who buys groceries from Costco in Juneau and brings them back to town.

The drive is relaxing, with the road drenched on both sides by mossy pines, and we’re able to snap a picture of our first national park sign of the trip. Then, after a quick dinner at Glacier Bay Lodge, it’s time for bed… at just 7:30 p.m. It’s been a long day traveling from Texas, so we rest up for our first full day of exploring tomorrow!

Day 2: Glacier Bay National Park Boat Tour

Our first full day in Alaska starts with a warm breakfast at the main lodge, which is just a short walk from our cabin. Once we’re full, we board the nearby boat for a tour of Glacier Bay National Park.

Onboard, we head to the second level of the boat, where we’ll have access to a seat with a window view and the outside deck. (The top back of a boat + fresh air can be very calming for those prone to motion sickness 🙋‍♂️)

We end up spending most of our time outside on the deck even though we both feel fine because the views are absolutely incredible. Despite months of planning and reading every post on Alaska that I could find, I had no idea just how grand the landscape throughout Glacier Bay National Park would be. It truly takes your breath away.

And that’s just the landscape!

The wildlife we see on our way to Margerie Glacier is the other remarkable thing about our first full day in Alaska. Otters are floating on their backs with their hands and feet in the air, passing by our boat one after another. Sometimes in pairs or forming otter rafts. A coastal brown bear is foraging in the grass across the way, and another is walking along the shore. Whales swim by our boat, sea lions and seals bask in the warm air, and no less than 17 puffins run across the surface of the water beside our boat before taking flight.

A Coastal Brown Bear walking along the shore.

Our captain successfully navigates a channel of small icebergs, and then we arrive at our highlight destination of the day, Margerie Glacier.

The boat stays put in place so we can take in the view.

Margerie Glacier is majestic.

The closer we get, the more icy and pristine the day becomes, but in a way that reminds you of December’s holiday magic more than January’s dreary cold.

Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park

Twice, we witness glacier calving before fog continues to roll in, decreasing our visibility. We leave Margerie Glacier to make our way back to the lodge, this day being unexpected and more impressive than we could have imagined.

As we’re making our way back toward the lodge, our guide is sharing information on the park and, at one point, mentions, “Right now, you are further from a paved road than you can be anywhere in the Lower 48.” Nothing like kicking off our Great Alaskan Road Trip nowhere near the road, ha!

The comment speaks to one of the most interesting things about Alaska and its vastness. Something we’re just beginning to notice. A trip like this opens your perspective and creates a sense of grandness—or smallness—in you. Like when you’re looking at the stars on a clear night. As we kick off our Great Alaskan Road Trip… in the middle of Glacier Bay National Park alongside a group of other travelers who boarded planes, buses, and boats to be here… you can’t help but reflect on how you think you’re adventurous and you’ve seen or done a lot… until you arrive in a place like Alaska. Until you find yourself further from a paved road than ever before.

Or maybe you can’t believe you’re on a three-week vacation, your longest yet, on a mission to see Alaska’s 8 national parks. And then you meet a Veterinary student touring Alaska solo for two months during summer break. You find out she’s spending 12 days backpacking through Kobuk and Gates of the Arctic National Parks, two of the most remote national parks in the United States. Ones we’ll be overjoyed just to step foot in.

Or then you meet a self-proclaimed “former cubicle worker” who left her job to take a seasonal opportunity in Alaska working on a boat in Kenai Fjords National Park (with no prior boat experience). She spends the rest of her year on a boat in Florida and is now working towards her captain’s license.

You even drop off two kayakers who will spend not just a morning and an afternoon far from paved roads but will spend eight nights kayaking Glacier Bay entirely on their own.

Don’t get me wrong. I am wildly proud of our Great Alaskan Road Trip. This is a dream come true. A huge undertaking and a whirlwind adventure. And this perspective you gain is one of my favorite things about traveling. You can’t help but come home with new places you want to see, new adventures you want to have, and new ideas of what’s possible when it comes to making a living or experiencing life.

On our way back to the lodge, I overhear a fellow traveler mention that their bucket list is getting longer and longer, not shorter and shorter, the more they travel. I can’t help but agree.

“Look outside,” our tour guide continues and recaptures my attention. “What you see is not here to entertain you… It doesn’t need to show off or impress you. The nature… the wildlife… what you see outside the windows, it just is.”

We sit down for dinner as soon as we get back to Glacier Bay Lodge. While we’re eating, we watch a porcupine snack on leaves out of a tree (while sitting in said tree, about 15 feet off the ground!) and see a whale swim through the harbor in front of us. We’re feeling snug, sitting by a wood-burning fireplace and enjoying a warm meal after a rainy afternoon with the kind of slight chill that settles just beneath the skin.

It’s been a magical first day in Alaska and quite simply picturesque… but you know that fantasy of moving to Alaska’s wilderness or going off the grid? Well, I tell Jon tonight that, after hearing multiple people say, “This is the Alaska weather we know and love,” in response to returning rain and mid-50-degree weather after three days of sunshine, that fantasy is losing a bit of lure for me.

“Really?” Jon says, “I feel it more.”

Day 3: Sea Kayaking and Fishing in Gustavus

Another day, another breakfast at the main lodge before hopping in our taxi for a day of sea kayaking and fishing in Gustavus. (Pronounced gust - like a gust of wind - and Avis - like the car rental company.)

Meeting up with our guide, we don rain and kayak gear before paddling from Gustavus Beach to Pleasant Island. Once we arrive, we sip hot apple cider and then take a short stroll through the woods before walking along the beach in search of tidal pools. Finding some, our guide shows us how to gently touch sea anemones, which leave behind an odd sensation as they grip your finger with dozens of antenna-like suction cups upon contact.

It’s great to explore Gustavus beyond the boundaries of Glacier Bay National Park, but our morning is not without adventure.

Enter: Jonathan vs. The Sea Lion.

While kayaking toward Pleasant Island a few hours earlier, Jonathan feels a small bump on his kayak. It’s strange because we’re no longer paddling over and around the kelp which was creating an unsmooth surface moments before. He looks down to see what’s going on and notices air bubbles coming from underneath his kayak. The water’s too opaque to know what’s causing the commotion, but he won’t wait long for his next clue. Movement catches his attention from behind his kayak, and a split second later, he watches a sea lion breach. He lands just feet from where Jonathan sits… in his round, V-shape float that could capsize with heavy wind, let alone a 600-800 pound marine mammal.

The splash grabs my attention a short distance away, and now we’re both watching as the sea lion continues doing whatever it's doing, no longer to the back of Jonathan’s kayak but instead on either side, swimming underneath the boat to breach on one side and then the other.

Admittedly, we’re watching in shock, more mesmerized by the moment than scared. It’s our guide that cuts through the awe & wonder of the moment… awe that has me reaching for my phone and attempting to turn my kayak around for a better view 😅 and wonder that has Jonathan frozen in place, unsure of what will happen next.

Our guide isn’t entirely confident about the sea lion’s intentions. Is this curious behavior? Is this aggressive? Is there a food source nearby that’s being defended? She’s never seen anything like this in years of kayaking to Pleasant Island, she tells us. So she instructs Jonathan to continue paddling forward, not wanting to risk the sea lion bumping him out of his kayak and into the cold water. (Right, yes! That is the appropriate response to a sea lion playing peek-a-boo with your husband’s kayak in the middle of the Alaskan sea.)

Doing as instructed, Jonathan paddles toward the beach in front of us. The sea lion matches his paddles for a while, huffing and puffing and poking his head out to monitor our progress as we go.

Eventually, Jon’s new friend lets him continue on without a chaperone, and while he’s still in the area keeping tabs on our movements during the paddle back, no further sea lion interactions give us a pretty incredible story during an otherwise sweaty and rainy paddle to and from Pleasant Island.

We pass a few otters, a beached seal, and a few porpoises, and then we’re back to Gustavus Beach, ready for a hot lunch in town and a break from the rain.

After lunch, we drive to the nearby Salmon River to try our luck river fishing. After all, we can’t visit Alaska and not fish at least once while we’re here! We might be in Alaska to see the national parks, scenery, and wildlife, but a good number of the people we’ve met are in town to fish. Some of them expect to catch a year’s worth of fish in just one week-long trip.

But although we’re meeting many experts, Jonathan and I are both new to river fishing. Turns out, it’s pretty relaxing!

After dragging two floats a short distance through the woods to a river access point, we simply float down the river from fishing spot to fishing spot. At each new spot, we hop out of the raft and cast a line. If a fish doesn’t bite as the line flows with the current, we reel the line in to cast again. The rain’s slowing by now, and the skies are clearing, surprisingly making our afternoon on the river my favorite part of the day. (I can’t help but think Alaska’s slogan should take after Big Brother’s “Expect the Unexpected.” Between the grandeur of Glacier Bay National Park, our sea lion encounter this morning, and my newfound appreciation for river fishing, Alaska is full of surprises!)

At one of our final fishing spots of the afternoon, Jonathan hooks a pink salmon, but it jumps free. I don’t get any bites, but learning to cast a fishing rod feels like success on its own, and the combination of river fishing and floating feels like the smallest glimpse into how locals spend their afternoons in Gustavus. In fact, Jon asked our taxi driver, a local with a long history in town, about her favorite thing to do in the area.

“Fishing,” she replied without hesitation. “Halibut fishing.”

River fishing on the Salmon River in Gustavus. The locals told us this was a typical Alaskan day weather-wise. A pretty constant drizzle of rain!

Day 4: Hiking in Glacier Bay & Travel to Seward

After 12 glorious hours of slumber — thanks to clutch room-darkening shades, which perfectly counter Alaska’s long summer days — we’re enjoying a slow morning, eating breakfast at the main lodge before it’s time to check out and head to our second destination later today.

We’re sitting at the same table by the window—the same table we’ve eaten at the previous two mornings— enjoying the cool breeze whenever the patio door to our side is opened. It feels great against the warmth of the lodge. We’re dining this morning, not just scarfing down breakfast to hurry up and explore, and I’m enjoying my first cup of coffee since arriving in Alaska. (I drink it for the ambiance, not the caffeine, so a quick cup en route to Gustavus Beach just isn’t the same, you know?)

We’re in no rush since we don’t have scheduled plans and actually have to wait for the gift shop to open so we can get quarters for a load of laundry. Since we packed light for this trip (two packing cubes of clothes each), we need to dry what got soaked from our day in the rain yesterday.

Today’s itinerary includes said laundy, a hike or two in Glacier Bay National Park, then two planes that’ll take us to Juneau and then Anchorage. We had planned a half-day whale-watching tour to Point of Adolphus, one of the best places in the world for whale-watching, but unfortunately, it was canceled the night before due to not meeting the requirements for a minimum number of guests.

“That’s okay; we have to leave something for next time!” Jon tells me when he notices my disappointment. I was really looking forward to seeing whales in Point of Adolphus, but it’s not in the cards for us on this trip. The canceled whale-watching tour was actually a backup plan after a Point of Adolphus Kayak-with-Whales Tour was canceled a month prior.

After a load of coin-operated laundry at Glacier Bay Lodge, we walk the gorgeous ‘Forest Loop Trail’ right outside the lodge. It’s a quiet trail that’s incredibly peaceful, and the trees covered in moss are gorgeous. We keep walking the trail, past the Glacier Bay Campground, to the beach, where Jonathan photographs oystercatchers and I look for seals and whales in the distance.

One of the oystercatchers Jonathan photographed!

We have to check out our room a few hours before we can catch the shuttle bus back to the airport, so we leave our things by the front desk after packing up. (Packing up, by the way, goes surprisingly well, considering this is only our second time to pack three weeks’ worth of gear into just two backpacks!) After dropping off our things, we head to another short trail near the lodge called the ‘Bartlett River Trail.’

This trail takes us through another mossy forest—sometimes shimmering from the sun, which has been a rare and appreciated sight during our stay in Gustavus. We end up at a peaceful spot by the river, where we sit on a rock and watch for wildlife while enjoying the view.

A few hours later, we’re back at the lodge, awaiting a shuttle bus to take us to Gustavus Airport. There, we’ll board a plane to Juneau, then another one to Anchorage, and finally pick up a rental car to drive to Seward.

We arrive two hours early at the small one-gate airport. We’re able to check bags or print boarding passes; otherwise, we wait until it’s time to “start security,”… which basically happens right before the plane arrives. (Security was also the shortest line we’ve ever been in… *maybe* a 3-minute wait.) We get through security, walk outside, show our boarding pass, and board the plane on the tarmac for a 15-minute flight to Juneau.

Flying from Gustavus to Juneau, I’m grateful we kicked off our trip with Glacier Bay National Park. It was cozy, and there was no cell service. We walked to dinner each night and went to bed early for lots of sleep. We enjoyed the peace of rainy days capped off by warm fireplaces, with various adventures in between.

Arriving in Anchorage, we’re happy to pick up a rental car (and have the ability to explore more easily on our own) and drive the famous Seward Highway to Seward, AK. You can see why it’s famous right away; Snow-shaded, grand mountains sit everywhere you look.

It’s been a long day for us traveling from Gustavus to Seward since the only flight out of Gustavus is at 5 p.m. We’d prefer a night in Anchorage so we could experience the full magnitude of Seward Highway in the daylight, but an exciting tomorrow in Seward keeps us going.

One shuttle, two flights, and a 2.5-hour drive later, we arrive at the second destination along our Great Alaskan Road Trip. We get right to bed for tomorrow’s early morning adventure—glacier dog sledding!—in Seward, Alaska.