Alaska

What We Did

Anchorage

We arrived in Anchorage on Memorial Day afternoon, surprisingly energized after our 4.5 day drive from Vancouver. Our new home was an old but spacious ground-floor unit in the Jewel Lake neighborhood of southern Anchorage. It felt very comfortable, even if it didn't necessarily look the part. The surrounding area felt like any classic American suburb. Everything we needed was pretty close by. Jewel Lake Park was right down the road from us - we biked here a few times on sunny evenings to hang out with the rest of the neighborhood. The park was consistently full of locals enjoying the finally summer-ish weather and late sunsets.

One of our first days in the city we biked from our house into Kincaid Park, the largest park in the city. The park has beautiful views of the Cook Inlet, and seemed to be a very popular place to bike, run, and off-season Nordic ski. We also saw our first two Moose! We were at first a little in shock: Anchorage has the equivalent of a Moose-a-mile, but we didn't realize how literal that was. They're everywhere. We also got our first taste of the unpredictability of Alaskan weather. Shortly after we turned to bike back home, the temperature dropped 10-degrees in a minute, and it started pouring. Glad we learned the lesson quick: things are different up here.

In preparation for our backpacking trip at the end of the month, we did several hikes around Anchorage. Anchorage is surrounded by Chugach State Park, which would easily have been a National Park if it was located in the lower 48. The park was full of steep peaks, alpine lakes, and large glacial valleys. We did 3 hikes around Anchorage: O'Malley Peak, Flattop Mountain, and Rabbit Lake. Flattop is the most iconic of the 3 - it's a steep scramble to a plateaued peak with views of the city, the bay, and the mountains beyond. We even saw Denali from here, way off in the distance.

One weekend, we switched up the routine and went kayaking at Eklutna Lake, a short drive north of the city. The lake is long and brilliant blue, with steep sides coming down from the high mountains surrounding it. It was a pretty sunny day - we both got burned. We also got caught by the shifting of the winds, so we had a headwind going both out and coming back, making it quite the workout. Still, it was one of our favorite experiences in the city.

Kenai Fjords

Our first full weekend in Alaska, we ventured out onto the Kenai Peninsula. It was a fairly long but incredibly scenic early-morning drive from the city to the historic town of Seward on the tip of the Peninsula. Here, we boarded a sightseeing boat and set out to sea. We immediately saw several sea otters floating in the calm bay. 20 minutes in, we encountered a pod of orcas swimming gracefully parallel to the boat. We were already getting a sense of the abundance of marine life in the area. As we exited the bay, the water quickly became choppy. A storm had just left the area (our tour was originally scheduled for the previous day but cancelled due to weather), so the sea was still quite violent. There was sickness aboard... We sped north to another inlet, passing massive seals and sea lions on the way. The water here was much calmer and we were able to recover a bit. Our first stop here was the Holgate Glacier. The air was noticeably chilled from the massive wall of ice, surrounded by steep cliffs and waterfalls. The boat paused here for a while before heading deeper into the Inlet to the second, larger glacier of the day, the Aialik Glacier. The route to the Aialik was a little more careful - the boat had to navigate large flows of ice floating like a minefield as we approached. Hundreds of harbors seals laid out on the ice watching us pass. The scale of this glacier was too large to capture on camera. Like the first, it was surrounded by vivid green mountains, with mountain goats on the steep slopes. Amazed by a day of ice and nature, we set back to Seward, passing a few more playful humpback whales and orcas on the way back.

Denali

We set out for Denali National Park on the afternoon of our fourth Friday in Anchorage, the day before the summer soltice. The weather was beautiful, sunny and 70. The drive itself is straight north from Anchorage about 6 hours or so. The early half wasn't too scenic, but when we pulled in for dinner at a little old restaurant on the highway we were greeted with spectacular views of the peak itself. It towered over the rest of the range so that it looked more like clouds than one of the mountains. We continued North for the second half of the drive, passing the now-fammiliar Alaska sights of lakes, forests, and mountains. We rolled into our campground around 9:30 PM, with plenty of daylight to spare. When we got there, we realized it was our first time staying at an actual campground together.

We woke Saturday morning ready to explore the park. Almost all of Denali is untrailed and unaccessible by car - only the first 20-or-so miles of the 100-mile road through wilderness is drivable. We opted to do a point-to-point hike starting from our campground and ending at the end of the car-accessed portion of the road. We drove to the end of the trail and left the car in the parking lot, biking the distance back to the campground and the trailhead. The trail took us up onto a high, windy ridge that looked down into the river valley below, with views of Denali off in the distance. We got back to the campground in the early afternoon, ready for Phase 2 of our plan.

We drove out of the park and headed north, hoping to get to Fairbanks for the annual Soltice festival. Less than 30 minutes into the drive however, we received an alert on our phones that timed perfectly with the sight of billowing black smoke on the road in front of us. We had encountered one of the many wildfires burning through central Alaska that weekend, and the road was at risk of closing. After some deliberation, we decided that the smart thing to do would be to turnaround and drink lots of beer instead. We turned around and headed straight for 49th State Brewing, where we sat in the warm sun and enjoyed the longest day of the year. We got back to camp late, but still with plenty of sunlight left in the day. A couple s'mores and a trip down to the river rounded out a soltice we will never forget.

For our Denali finale, we visited the famous four-legged rangers. We were lucky enough to meet a new litter of pups, who were eager to impress and serve. The elder dogs took a load off in their little houses and enjoyed cool mist in the hot morning. We learned quite a bit about the history of sled dogs in Alaska, and in Denali specifically. We left very impressed and energized for the drive home.

Thoughts

• Summer here feels timeless. We never saw even close to darkness, let alone full night. The sun is very deceptive - when it seems like it should be setting it continues to move across the sky and just refuses to go down. It made it a little hard to adjust, and particularly hard to wake up in the morning, but very easy to enjoy the outdoors at any time of day.

• People really take advantage of the sunlight and long days to spend lots of time outside in nature.

• Anchorage itself isn't all that great, but it's central location and proximity to amazing nature makes it a city worth going to.

• The people of Alaska are impressive. At all ages, they seem to be stronger, fitter, rougher, and more able to handle tough outdoor activities. When we were bundled up at the top of the mountain, the locals were jogging up in shorts and tank tops.

• More than once, we had considered that Anchorage/Alaska would be a good place for a second home. That is, until we remembered how far it is from everything. Even a flight to Seattle, the closest lower-48 city, is 3-hours and very expensive. It's just tough to get to.

• Denali is night-and-day compared to the other Alaska national parks. While most are fly-in or boat-in only, with minimal trails and resources around, Denali had a large village, connected by train, and several well-equipped campgrounds and at least a few maintained trails.

• We definitely left a lot on the table here and want to come back for more.

Favorites

• Eye Tooth/Moose Tooth Pizza - The Tooth restaurants both brought the heat with crazy individual pies and delicious detroit-style.

• 49th State Brewing - Home to two of the best beers we've ever tasted: the Smok and the Golden Dall. Special shoutout to the Denali location for sheltering us during our Wildfire redirection.

• Anchorage Brewing - Large warehouse brewery with live music

• The Hoarding Marmot - Second-hand outdoor gear that came through for us a few times.

• Dos Manos - Local art and clothing store, great for souvenirs.