Well, if you have a car and you want to take my dinner and trail recommendations, let me give a few more. I'm not sure how you can work these into your schedule, but they're here for the taking.

Great (HIGHLY recommended) restaurants in Anchorage (maybe dinner on the night you arrive or lunch the next day):
-Simon and Seafort's (awesome fresh Alaskan seafood, steaks and other great food. My favorite is the parmesan asiago-crusted halibut)
-Glacier Brewhouse (local microbrewery with good beers and great food, from seafood to rotisserie meats and all kinds of other stuff)
-The Brewhouse's sister restaurant, Orso (Alaskan seafood-influenced nouveau Italian cuisine is probably the best way I can describe it)
-Another local microbrewery serving awesome pizza: Moose's Tooth. Hard to describe--best to go straight to their menu.

Those are my top recommendations for experiencing the best cuisine Alaska has to offer. If you end up coming back to Anchorage, check on the following:

-Southside Bistro (more nouveau seafood stuff like wood-grilled halibut, etc.)
-Jens' (Danish-inspired nouveau-ish food from Alaska's celebrity Danish chef)
-Kincaid Grille (probably THE BEST steak I've had in my life--even better than Ruth's Chris. Only open for dinner.)
-White Spot (an authentic '50s-ish greasy spoon, but awesome burgers and even more awesome halibut sandwiches. Hidden on a corner in eastern downtown near the Howard Johnson.)

Fortunately, the dining choices in Anchorage far exceed what you'd expect for its size. This list could go on and on, but these are my current (and all-time) favorites. Do some restaurant searches on Frommer's, TripAdvisor, MyTravelGuide.com and other ratings sites to see what else looks good. Also check out the restaurant reviews archive at http://www.anchoragepress.com/ -- they tell it like it is and seek out the new and little-known-but-awesome eateries. (You can also check out Alaska's more respected newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News.)

Also, some trails that I've heard my friends making plans to hike but have never done so myself (look for these on the trails sites I mentioned previously):
-Resurrection Pass, from Cooper Landing to Hope (on the Kenai Peninsula sort of between Seward and Anchorage)
-Crow Pass, from Girdwood to Eagle River (an overnighter)
-Powerline Pass and associated trails just east of Anchorage--there's an abundance of well-maintained trails that are awesome in the Chugach Mountains overlooking Anchorage. I've done a little bit of hiking around O'Malley Peak, but nothing of any longer distance.)

Hope this helps and enjoy your trip!

One last post here: I just found a cool site that gives links to all state and federal recreational areas: Recreation.gov. Here's the direct link to Alaskan recreational sites: http://www.recreation.gov/advancedsearch.cfm?states=AK

Hope this helps and (again) enjoy your trip!

How good is EVDO coverage in Alaska?
 

Don't mean to hijack this thread but how good is the EVDO coverage in Alaska and whose service do you use? I'm doing a four day trip next week staying at the various Princess lodges around Denali. I'll have my laptop with appropriate hardware and am interested in various Internet options (WifFi, EVDO, Dialup, wired Ethernet, etc).

It probably depends on who your service is through. I think ACS (the local telco/wireless provider that has EV-DO) has a roaming agreement with Verizon, so if you have Verizon's EV-DO, you may get service. EV-DO is only really available in the larger cities, so most of the "wilderness" area along the Parks Highway is served only at 1xRTT speeds. You may only get 1xRTT service even in EV-DO areas, as when I was in the Lower 48, I was able to roam on Verizon's network but only at 1xRTT speeds. If you have Sprint, my guess is you won't get any coverage, although I could be wrong.

Assuming a compatible service, you'll probably have service where you really need it. Service is (obviously) strong in most parts of Anchorage and fairly seamless all the way up through the northern end of the Wasilla/Pittman/Houston area. North of that, it comes and goes up through Willow and then fades out more or less completely until the McKinley Princess lodge, where I posted my original comment from. On the road north of there, you'll probably have only spotty coverage (there's an ACS tower in Cantwell that provides data coverage) until the Denali Park hotel area, where the Denali Princess lodge is located. My recollection was that service showed but wasn't very strong in that area; fortunately, the Princess front lodge had a wireless access point, and they may have more WAPs around their campus. I believe the front lodge also had a wired Ethernet port near one of the plasma TVs, and there are probably others (a traceroute from the Denali Princess indicated they had MTA DSL--I guess the area around Denali Park has grown up a bit in the last few years!

All of the hotels and towns along the highway have landline phone service, so you'll be able to get dialup if need be. Depending on your provider, you may have a local access number in Anchorage or Wasilla, but I doubt you'll have a local call from anywhere north of there (I could be wrong).

Hope this helps!

Jackal - no need to reply - but thanks for your advice. I just checked in again before my trip - what great info - you should be working for the state! I have written down the hikes and restaurants - checked out the menus - plan on Glacier brewpub the night we arrive - already know what I'm going to eat (beer choices will have to wait). Thanks again.

Jackal .. Thanks for the detailed info. I just returned from a 7 day cruise on the Diamond Princess followed by stays at the Mt. McKinley Princess Lodge & the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. I was able to use the WiFi in the lobby at both these lodges albeit the WAN connection was slow. The slowness was caused by tons of people uploading megatons of digital pictures all the time. There were also some teenagers hogging the terminals in on-line chats with their friends back home while there were a lot of people waiting to access the terminals but fortunately I had my laptop. What normally takes me about 3-5 mintues to download my email took me about an hour for approximately the same amount of MB.