I hate to give anyone who has a perfect score less than a 5-stars because this would break his streak but I feel like I should share our experience.
Levi was recommended to us by the nearby visitor's center (he was parked outside of it). Normally, I would NEVER approach someone advertising this way but considering he was recommended, we felt okay about it. Levi was so awesome to talk to and we really enjoyed him as a person. He kinda gave us the rundown of what types of tours he does and the pricing. I would recommend going to his website as with all the numbers, locations and activities he was throwing at us, we kinda forget what he was talking about.
We left, chatted more about it and then called him to book our trip for the next day. My hesitation with booking was a.) it was a lot of money ($195/person) and b.) I hadn't heard of any of these places before so I wasn't sure how necessary they were to see. Really, I didn't even remember what we were signing up to see but we didn't want to waste a whole day in Alaska so we wanted to sign up for something.
Another person ended up tagging along on our tour, which I was totally cool with. Levi picked this guy up at this hotel, kinda outside of town and then picked us up. The day started out super gorgeous but the further south we went, it got crappier and crappier. Not Levi's fault at all, obviously, but it didn't help improve the day's events. Levi talked about all sorts of history and such during our drive south, which was really awesome. He was incredibly friendly and warm.
First, on our way south, we stopped at a couple parks and such. These were small parks with no one else at them so it's not like they're super popular or have crowds of people. We wandered by the water and took some pictures of the mountains. The first one was Beluga Point which was cute but Bird Point wasn't really that great (but had bathrooms). It felt like trying to waste time.
We then traveled to Alyeska Resort to do the Aerial Tram. For some background, we had just spent 35 days in New Zealand, surrounded by mountains and beauty so we were a little over the mountain scene. We got discounted tickets since my husband is military but it was still $22/person (normally $30/person) to get a lift ticket to the top, just to sightsee. We also got there about 30 minutes too early so we had to walk around killing time until the tram was even open. The view at the top wasn't that great and we just wandered around until we had spent about 45 minutes and felt we had spent sufficient time there for what we had paid.
We then drove further south, through Portage, towards Portage Lake. We first stopped at a small spot by the water - the others skipped rocks and you could see the silt in the water more unclose. Nearby, we turned off on this side trail to look at, in the distance, Portage Glacier. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was looking at - perhaps there's better places to view it...? We left and went towards Begich Boggs Visitor Center, which was, in my opinion, the best part of the tour. In the water by the center were these large bits of the glacier. Up close like that, they were gorgeous! Apparently, the week prior, they were about double the size so this is obviously not something you can count on seeing.
From there, we turned back towards Anchorage and went to Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. The entrance is included in the tour so you don't have to pay for this. I know a lot of people seem to like this place but we found it pretty boring. I loved reading some of the stories behind the animals (like the bears) but it seemed like a quarter of the animals were missing. In addition, the enclosures were sad and bare. Some of the animals they had were animals I've seen in the wild growing up or in recent years - Eagles, deer, porcupines, bison and owl. The only animal I was excited to see was a moose. I realize what the point of the conversation was but as a whole, this is not a place that is worth traveling to.
From there, out tour was done and we headed back to Anchorage. I think everyone was tired so we drove mostly in silence, which was much appreciated. The guy in the front seat was sleeping a majority of the time.
Levi takes pictures of things and that was really cool - but we never got them, despite being told we would. What bothered me even more was there were times he seemed way too into getting pictures or videos that we felt like we were secondary. One time, all three of us sat in the van for about two minutes while he took video (we could hear him describing things on the video). He did that again later, at the Conservation Center. We were all done in the gift shop/using the bathroom and couldn't find him and finally tracked him down in front of the eagle, taking video and describing what he was seeing. It's like he was going to post these to a blog or his website or something and we didn't feel as important since we were a done-deal.
I was pretty disappointed in our tour and the only reason I am giving a 3/5 (versus 1/5) is because I'm sure the weather made us moody and we would have enjoyed it more if the weather was nicer, we should have done the research and decided if we truly wanted to do these activities/this tour, Levi is a really cool guy and finally, there were a couple interesting things to see (like the ice chunks and a moose).