Alaska Uncovered Podcast

How Jennie can help you with your Alaska trip in 2026 and Beyond

• Episode 160

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 Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co-host and full-time husband, Jay, and I bring you accurate, helpful, and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and life in Alaska.









Hi everyone, it's Jennie.





Here we are at the last episode in our mini series for the last week of the year. So happy almost New year everybody. And just a reminder that if you wanna get in on the drawing to. Win an Alaska Tour Saver in our giveaway. Make sure that you get your review in by tonight, December 31st at 11:59 PM So just to remind you, what you do is you leave a review for the podcast on.

Any platform, take a screenshot and email it to me. You have to email it to me because otherwise I'm gonna miss some. So send it to me at jen jn@ordinaryadventures.com and then you'll be entered to win a Tour Saver app. Woohoo. Good luck and I will email the winner on January 8th to let you know.

Okay. So today, to wrap this up, I want to share the ways that I can help you with planning your trip in 2026 or beyond. And I know that I talk about these things in different episodes at different times, but I thought it might be nice to just talk about. Everything in one episode and then in future episodes, you know, I'll remind you of whatever thing is the most relevant to that episode, but this'll be everything in one place.

So first of all, for the very first time ever, Jay and I are leading. Own trip. So as you know, Jay and I met working in tourism. We've both worked as guides. I currently still do that for another company, as a tour director. This is a trip that Jay and I are leading. And we are going to reopen registration on January 8th until February 14th.

And we do have, it is a small group tour. We have two rooms left. And what that means is that there could, if it's a single person, there'd be room for two people. If it's two. If you're sharing a room with somebody else, then we can take up to four additional people. It's the, the number of rooms we have that's kind of the limiting factor around that.

And we wanted to keep the group small and that is the max number of people we can fit in our rental vehicles . So if you're thinking about it, we'd love to have you come and join us. It's gonna be so fun. It's called Authentic Alaska. We are only going to small, locally owned. Businesses, like many of the ones that you've heard in the last few days

some of them have been discussed in the last few days, but not all of them. We're gonna be staying exclusively at small family owned. Lodges and ins. We are going to be going on tours exclusively that are operated by small, locally owned Alaska businesses and our rental vehicles the same. All of our food except for.

You know, we're getting a few things at Costco before the trip, but other than that, it's all gonna be local. All the money is gonna stay in the community. We're really, really excited about it. That also means that you're gonna be going to places on this trip, that if people don't go very often, and that's why we're doing it.

So I'm really excited about it. If this feels like it has your name on it. Go ahead and do the registration form now, and then I will email you on January 8th, , to pay your deposit. And the first link in the show notes is going to be the page that talks about the itinerary, the pricing, the costs, the cancellation policy, all of that stuff.

So check out that link if you wanna learn more. Okay, so since most of you are not going to be coming with us, since we only have two to four spots left, I wanna talk about the ways that I can help you other than traveling with you. So one of them, of course, this podcast is totally free, and we'll have an episode every week.

And we have 159 previous episodes to help you as well. My website, which is ordinary adventures.com, it's, it's called Top Left Adventures, but I didn't change the URL so lots. It's a ad free website. I removed ads from. My site over a year ago, and I am building my business in other ways besides ad revenue and ways that are better for me, ways that are better for my partners, and ways that are better for you because there's no ads.

You can use those articles to help plan your trip. Another thing that's totally free that I wanna encourage you to do if you haven't already, is to sign up for my email list for my weekly email newsletters, and it's not the same as what's in the podcast, so I am often recording these episodes. In many cases, months ahead of when they air because of my, uh, tour director's schedule.

And so the email newsletter is to, is always things that are like super timely. And that's not that the podcast episodes aren't ever, but for example, my email newsletter would include things like, this is the week that Denali. Camping reservations are available, or here's what's going on with this wildfire right now.

Things like that. So, um, it is different content from what I talk about in the podcast. I think that's the most important thing. Occasionally it'll be about the same topic. That probably happens four or five times a year. So, um. If you want up-to-date news and information as you prepare for your trip, definitely sign up for it.

Um, that link will be the second link in the show notes. Okay. So what if you could use some more help? Or you want to support me and Jay? Well, that's awesome. I'd love to do that. There's a few ways we can do that as well. So the first one is the Alaska Uncovered Patreon Planning Club. I talked about this in the fall when it first launched.

It has been so fun. Uh, people who are in the club pay $9 a month on Patreon. It's pretty easy to do that. If you haven't used Patreon before. Um, you can follow the link in the show notes or you can just go to patreon.com and uh, find Alaska uncovered, or the URL is just patreon.com/alaska uncovered and.

You can join as a free member, but you don't really get anything. If you want to do something free, you should sign up for my email newsletter instead. 'cause that has um, lots of great content, but in the planning club. Every week. So what I do is all of the members of the planning club submit questions in a Google form, or you can email me too and, uh, then I collect them all.

And I record a private podcast, that answers everybody's questions. So I just roll through the questions I got and answer them. And it's so fun for me and I've gotten feedback that it's really helpful. So if that would help you as you get ready for your trip, definitely join us.

It's designed so that you would just cancel your subscription when you're done with your trip.

Of course, if you wanna stay in, you totally can, but it's not like I'm expect expecting. People would stay in there forever. You can cancel anytime you want to for no reason. I'm not gonna ask you why you canceled. Just you do you. You know what you need and you do it. Okay? So Patreon, that's one thing.

Couple other things that I wanted to talk about. So my, and also I should say that everything else I'm talking about, um, pa, the Patreon members, the planning club members get a discount on all of these things. So that's pretty cool too. Alright, so my 30 minute planning sessions that are on Zoom, that's where you sign up on my calendar and you sign up for a 30 minute session and then we talk and I give you personalized advice based on your situation. And when you book a session, um, there are a few basic questions that are optional, but if you answer them, that will really help me be able to give you, uh, make the best use of that time that we have together.

So those cost $47 if you don't like Zoom and you'd rather have me call you, that's totally fine. Just give me your phone number and I'm happy to do that. Okay, so we've talked about the planning club, we've talked about planning sessions on Zoom.

I also will just plan your trip for you. So. Some of you who've been around a while know that I was a travel agent for a while. I've stopped doing that for various reasons, but I've gone back to what I did before where you just pay me a flat rate and I plan your whole trip for you. And then I send you lots of document.

Well, not one document with different tabs, um, but included in there is everything you need to know. To book. There's a zoom session that is built into that. You can have more if you want to. There's no additional charge for that. And then when I give you everything, you just go and book it and I give you all the links and all the information, and you should be able to complete it all within 30 minutes of me getting it to you.

Pricing for that. Varies based on the number of days it is, but I'll put the link in the show notes so you can go and look and see kind of what the options are. And then finally, um, the last thing I wanted to mention today is my online shop where I have a bunch of different workshops and planners that are all digital and those are all priced between 17 and $24.

And you can, uh, pick up whatever is gonna help you. Whether that's my Alaska adventure, uh, planner, or it's digital. It's not a physical planner. People have asked for that, but there is no way to do it at a reasonable cost. It would just have to be too expensive, um, to be at the quality that I like of paper and whatever.

So, um, yeah, so it's digital. And then I also have a bunch of workshops where. Basically you watch the video, um, anytime you want to, and then there are some documents that go with those. In the past, I have had, um, done for you itineraries there, but I am actually changing that. I am, I have removed those from, my shop and.

I am going to rerecord those as video, uh, short video courses for the same price. So I will be working on that in the next few months and, um, folks on my email list will get first crack at those or in the Patreon Planning Club, but I'll let all of you know as well. When those are live. And you can always get a discount.

Ha ha. Um, if you put in the code podcast, you'll always get a 10% discount on everything that's in my online shop, and that's all the time for everybody. So. Enjoy that. The URL for the shop is shop dot ordinary adventures.com. I'll put it in the show notes as well. So I think that is everything. I think, you know, the planning sessions and the Patreon Planning Club membership are the most popular ways that people interact with me.

Those are really great for answering questions about your specific situation.

Thanks for being here for this short mini series. Happy almost new year, and I'll be back in your ears on Tuesday, and then we'll have our regular episodes on Tuesdays going forward from there. Happy New Year. Bye for now.

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if you are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a rating and or a review. It really helps other people find us. And if you want to join the Alaska Planning Club, it's super fun. It's a private podcast feed where I answer all your questions. You can find that over on patreon.com/alaska uncovered. 

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Jennie Thwing Flaming

Host
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Jay Flaming

Co-host