You don’t need 10 days or $5,000 to see Alaska – in fact, a quick jaunt can offer an unforgettably intimate experience.

I paddle my kayak around a bend in the cove and gasp. Two sea lions are playing only inches away. My first instinct is awe. Afraid to scare them off, I stop paddling. Suddenly, a bull as big as a barrel, at least seven feet long and probably almost 1,000 pounds, lifts his head out of the water and bares enormous bloody teeth. I freeze. The three sea lions swim closer, diving under me then popping up on either side of my kayak. I’m new to kayaking and terrified the smallest nudge will tip me over.

“Are they being friendly, or are they angry?” I ask Josh, my guide, hoping he’ll tell me this is normal, that these enormous slippery mammals love company.
Instead, without moving a muscle, he says, “This isn’t safe. I’ve never seen them get so close to people.”

This trip to Alaska was not well-planned. I always imagined I’d make it here someday. Like when I retire and have the time and money to see the Inside Passage from the deck of a cruise ship. Instead, when my friends Kara and Dave announced a last-minute destination wedding in Seward – a small port town about 130 miles south of Anchorage –I stole away for a long weekend.

I put my oar back in the water, just an inch, hoping to creep away without making a ripple. I paddle so gently I could be stirring an overfilled cup of tea. Miraculously, this is enough to propel me through the glassy water to safety.

I’m not a wildlife person – or I wasn’t before coming to Alaska – so I’m surprised to find myself sharing my personal space with sea lions, looking down through icy water at pulsating neon jellyfish, pointing out bald eagles in the trees above, and brushing past the hundreds of Technicolor starfish that hang from the dripping cliffs and inlets of Thumb Cove in Alaska’s Kenai Fjords National Park.

I usually prefer trips to big cities where I can indulge in chef’s tasting menus or get lost in a labyrinth of foreign streets. When I arrived in Anchorage airport’s rustic north terminal where the walls are covered in preserved moose heads and petrified fish, I thought I’d landed in a wilderness so remote that penguins would be signing onto immigration waitlists. The locals reinforced my backwater expectations as they stood around the baggage claim conveyer belt anxiously waiting for ice chests to clank down. Facing scarce local supplies, they’re forced to make regular trips to the lower 48 to stock up on food.

Now somehow, only a few hours and a few hundred miles later, after passing bears on the road and being scared by sea lions, the rest of the world seems remote in relation to how far it is from Alaska. And my glamorous cities seemed barbaric for shunning their wildlife and open spaces.

I’m not the only one whose state of mind was transformed after visiting the 49th state. Hailing from Louisiana, Illinois, California and especially Pennsylvania, almost everyone I have met moved here as an adult shortly after their first visit. Josh, my kayak guide, fell in love with Seward after backpacking here a few years ago. Now, he goes back to Pennsylvania, where he grew up, each winter then comes home to Seward as soon as the ground begins to thaw. He lives in a bunkroom at Miller’s Landing, the campground and tour company that pays him to ensure naïve tourists like me don’t get eaten by sea creatures.

When I wandered into the campground looking for a tour, Josh was thrilled to get out on the water for the first time since he’d been back and felt lucky to have a customer so early in the season. It was the end of April, and as he says, “no one comes before Memorial Day.” I felt lucky too. I was so early that the cashiers were still trying to remember how to work the register. The two giggling ladies couldn’t remember how much to charge for a trip, how to book it, or how to ring it up. Embarrassed, they offered me an early-bird discount – half off.

It seems the entire town of Seward is just waking up, dusting itself off and opening its doors. While a few brave souls hunker down each winter risking the frozen tundra to live here year-round, the town itself shuts down when the tourists stop coming and the fish stop biting. The funky seaside town resembles the village of Cecily on “Northern Exposure.” Although I haven’t seen a moose cruising down Seward’s mile-long main drag, I’m keeping my eyes open.

Between the quiet coves, teeming with wildlife, and the love-struck locals, the atmosphere feels so alive, that I too imagine staying forever.

Since I’m a practical girl, I book two nights at the Best Western Edgewater Hotel instead. Standing on my balcony overlooking Resurrection Bay and its stunning mountain perimeter, amid a record-setting high temperature of 73-degrees, I understand perfectly why my friends chose to come so far to take their vows. I leave my window open and stare at the icy scenery while enjoying a balmy breeze, the curtains blowing lightly, in a room that remains drenched in sun until nearly 11 p.m. – one of the earliest sunsets of the tourist season.

The next morning, sore from my paddling adventure, I wake to another warm sunny day on the icy bay, then walk to the harbor where Kara and Dave, decked out in glamorous wedding attire, introduce the guests to Captain Terry of the Crackerjack Express, the 40-foot fishing boat they have rented for the occasion.
It isn’t the Hornblower Yacht I was expecting; in fact, they squeeze 14 of us onboard, which is two more than their regular max of 12 passengers. Unlike their usual patrons, we don’t plan to catch seven-foot long halibut.

The captain explains that we’ll be the first boat out there all year, so he isn’t sure he’ll be able to cut through the ice to bring us all the way to our planned stop, Aialik Glacier, a picturesque four-mile-wide tidewater glacier and perfect ceremony backdrop.

We cruise for a few hours, watching schools of black and white Dall’s porpoises dive in and out of our bow wake. According to Captain Terry, it’s their equivalent of a roller coaster. They play in front of us for miles. Leaning over the edge of the boat against forceful wind, I feel as if I’m the one at an amusement park. Captain Terry whips the boat around corners, cliffs, boulders, and small islands like we’re in a speedboat. We reach out to touch the surrounding cliffs. I feel like a fairy-tale pirate as we duck in and out of inlets, surrounded by waterfalls, searching the clear water for sand dollars on the bottom.

He pulls inside Chat cove where the water is so smooth inside it looks like an Infinity pool with a disappearing ledge to the ocean. At the ledge, sit three tiny islands. The bigger of them is Big Chat, the littler one is Little Chat and the itsy bitsy one is called Chitty Chat. The captain cuts the engine and runs out onto the bow. He points at a spot where a wisp of mist lingers in the breeze.

A moment later and a few feet away we see another stream of mist shoot up from the water as a humpback whale surfaces and then dives back down. When he pops up a hundred yards away, I assume he is swimming away from the boat. Then I realized it is a second humpback as two whales surface at the same time. We learn that they typically come up three or four times for air before taking a deep plunge. That final plunge is the one to watch; just before they disappear, they fling their tail into the air.

Still resting inside the cove, we watch bald eagles glide through the air and feed their young in cliffside nests. As we pull away, Terry spot something on the cliff, whips the boat around and shushes us all. He points first to a white spot then a black spot on the mountain. “Focus on any area of the mountain without snow,” says Captain Terry. “Then look for black bears, they stand out like nobody’s business.” We inch closer, and the spots begin to move. In an instant, the white spot becomes a mountain goat, and the black turns into a black bear scrambling up the cliff.

A few miles later, three glaciers, all part of the Harding Ice Field (North America’s largest), come into view. We close in on our destination, Aialik Glacier, but have to cut through thin sheets of ice and dodge icebergs, some as big as small islands, so big that groups of harbor seals use them as deck chairs and lay out to catch some sun. The bergs grow more and more numerous, glistening in the sun and melting into shapes like ice sculptures or Swarovski crystals. Floyd, the deck hand, reaches down and fishes out some smaller chunks and throws them on the deck for us to admire.

The boat slows to a crawl and we crunch our way through thicker and thicker ice, gasping at the hideous wrenching noises from under the hull. The last half-mile takes nearly an hour to get through, but we creep toward the glacier for the ceremony.

The glacier appears to be 20 yards away, but when hunks of ice crack off and crash to the water, like thunder, we can see them well before we hear them. It turns out to be more than half a mile away.?

The wedding is beautiful, so beautiful that the guests are as sorry for me as they are happy for the bride and groom.

“You’re going to try to put this into words?” I hear at least once from almost everyone on board.

“No,” I say. “I can’t. I’ll just tell people to go. I’ll say don’t wait until you have $5,000 and two weeks of vacation. Just go.”

Yes, that still sounds about right. Even if you’re not a wildlife person.

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Where to Stay
With balconies overlooking Resurrection Bay and the Kenai Mountains, the Best Western Plus Edgewater Hotel offers the area’s best views (www.hoteledgewater.com, (888) 793-6800), along with a convenient downtown location. Rates start at $226.

The Holiday Inn Express Seward Harbor (www.hiexpress.com search for Seward, (907) 224-2550) is at the north end of town by the boat harbor, making it especially convenient for a cruise through the Kenai Fjords. Rates start at $219.

A few miles outside of town, the Seward Windsong Lodge (www.sewardwindsong.com, (877) 777-4079) offers a woodsy log cabin experience and is an excellent launching point for a short hike to nearby Exit Glacier. From $155 per night.

Where to Eat
At Ray’s Waterfront, a mostly seafood menu reads like an ode to local halibut – halibut cheeks, halibut Andaman, halibut buerre blanc, and halibut fish and chips. Of course being Alaska, you’ll also get king crab and local salmon. Expect a great view from the dining room, which juts out over the harbor.

Inside a World War II railroad dining car, Smoke Shack serves up homemade (even the ketchup) “food for the soul.” Everything is smoked, from burgers to pulled pork to green chile burritos to vegetable sides.

Salmon Bake Restaurant, a rustic log cabin in the woods by Exit Glacier, is known for its selection of Alaska microbrews on tap and its self-serve pickle barrel. Choose a burger, sandwich or seafood dinner, then pick out the best pickle you can find.