jackal

BOB W's covered a lot of the basics. I'm eternally pressed for time these days and so can't quite take the time to do as comprehensive of a response in the Alaska forum as I've done in previous years, but I did just want to add that while Bob suggests coming up in early May, I would actually suggest late May.

May 15 is when all of the tourism industry operators open for business and start running their stuff. If you show up before May 15, you might find a lot of the businesses in the tourism industry closed or on very limited schedules. That includes everything from the Alaska Native Heritage Center in ANC (a must-see; it opens for business May 10) to air taxi flightseeing services to the Denali park bus system (buses start running May 20; before that, you cannot even get into the best parts of the park except by snowshoe) to the glacier cruises in Whittier and Seward. So if you come up too early, you may find that it's a) a bit chilly for your liking and b) many of the options of things you would want to do are not yet ready for you.

Late May is still fine as far as prices go. It's not yet really peak-of-peak season, so airfares are usually fairly reasonable as the extra seasonal services start in mid-May but planes aren't full, and rental car companies have brought in their summer fleets but aren't yet sold out. Even into early June might be acceptable price-wise; the travel industry usually tries to jack rates up starting June 1 ("June, July, and August" are the peak-of-peak months), but the business isn't quite there yet to sustain high prices, so things usually settle back down until the real heavyweight season starts around June 10-15. Then once you hit June 21--Solstice, the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon, the Fairbanks Midnight Sun Festival, peak of the first run of Kings on the Kenai--forget it. Everything is sold out and you will be paying a pretty penny to visit Alaska. Peak tourist and fishing season stays with us (with a small tourism dip around the July 4 holiday, when rental cars and hotels might be slightly cheaper than surrounding weeks due to lower demand) until about the middle of August, when things start to go in reverse--people go home and prices drop as August peters out, followed by the conclusion of the State Fair on Labor Day and then finally the closing up of the tourism industry in mid-September, when everything is rainy and soggy and leaves are falling (not a good time to come, IMHO, unless you're going to the State Fair and Dutch Harbor ).

So late May is my preferred suggestion for a great time to visit Alaska. Just bring an extra jacket, as it's not quite hot yet--you might see temperatures in the high 50s to low 60s versus the mid-to-high 60s in June with occasional peaks in the 70s from late June through early August (there were even some days above 80 this year--Alaskans melt like igloos at those temperatures).