When your dream comes TRUE..I saw ALL of DENALI, Alaska!
Read about my journey from Anchorage to Talkeetna here… and see below for my amazing bucket list adventure in Denali with four moose, Denali BackCountry Adventure Experience and my stay at Denali Cabins with Pursuit Alaska!
We woke up at Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge to an exceptional clear view of Denali! Only 20% of people see it without clouds! Driving from Talkeetna, we could see the peak the entire way! AMAZING! There are photos below, comparing our view from two different days when we saw all the peaks and when we saw none.
I loved the 46 peaceful cozy cedar Denali Cabins –8 miles from the entrance of Denali National Park. We went for an incredible hike, we saw four moose and we loved the Denali BackCountry Adventure Experience by Pusuit! The Denali Cabins have two hot tubs, a sauna and two restaurants, Prey and Mount Hunter. We had very warm weather which was perfect for hiking and exploring.
WHAT TO DO in DENALI?
HIKE: Horseshoe Lake Trail: start at Mile 1 of the Denali Park Road, where the Alaska Railroad crosses the Park Road. We did the loop around the lake and a spur out to the beaver dam! This is a stunning scenic trail and we saw a giant swan on the lake. It was about 10 minutes by car from Denali Cabins to the trail head.
Hula-Hooping with EPIC VIEWS on the way to DENALI! and YES I hula-hoop everywhere!
We saw FOUR MOOSE! Remember for the safely of the WILD ANIMAL and yourself—DO NOT APPROACH. Stay in your car if you see them on the road– click for more tips from The National Park Service and Denali Park Service.
The Denali BackCountry Adventure Experience takes you on the #2 of the Top 10 drivers’ drives by National Geographic. We traveled by bus over 65 miles on the rugged gravel Denali Highway. It is an incredible scenic drive, and we saw two moose and a caribou. We had lunch at the historic Alpine Creek Lodge and I did all the activities: gold-panning, guided hike and sled dog kennel tour!
Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster.
You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views.
With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.
As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries.
For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.
Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals
including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo.
https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver
Awards
National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards
2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out”
2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver”
2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art
Southern California Journalism Awards
2022 Finalist: Book Criticism
2021 Winner: Technology Reporting
2021 Finalist: Book Criticism
2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt”
2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature
2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway”
2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile
2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers”
Social Media Presence
YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views)
Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts
Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers)
Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers)
Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views)
Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers)
LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)
