Road Trip

 Yay! Road Trip!

I had a high school friend to visit me here in Anchorage and I decided to take him for a road trip!
The goal was to give him the taste of the Alaska. I mean not only the touristy stuff which visitors usually do here in Alaska but also to show him how locals play in the backyard of this beautiful state.

My rules for this trip were simple: sleep either under the stars, in the tent or in the log cabin, show off the interior of Alaska as well as the coast, see a lot of wildlife, taste as many local beers as possible and eat a lot of fish.

We started by hiking the Flat Top right after his arrival. Flat Top is one of the most popular hikes here in Anchorage. It is not necessary hard hike but you get amazing views of the Anchorage Bowl and  mountain ranges in the area. The weather was great and the hike build up a thirst for some local brews so the visit to 49Th state Brewery was in order. Couple beer flights and we were set for the good start into this trip.

However, the weather had a different idea, the first day was pretty much the last day of this trip when we saw a sun. So the plan for next couple days was to visit Denali Natl Park. I planned to stay at Byers Lake cabin on the way to Denali as a little warm up before we start camping outside. It was raining whole day but we enjoyed chopping wood and catching up on past 15 years of life.  I booked a camping site at the Savage River campsite which is the last point on the Denali Natl Park Park road accessible by own vehicle. It is 13 miles into the park out of probably 90 miles. The rest of the road is only accessible by tour bus. We went to check out all the hikes in the area but all of them were close due to the bear threat so we pretty much just walked from the trail head to the trail head and hope that we will see the bears.
Next day morning we woke up and there was about 1-2 inches of snow on our tent. No wonder that it was freezing as shit over the night. We slowly unfroze and got ourselves on the road to drive the Denali Highway. Let's not confuse Denali Highway with Denali Park road .

Denali highway is a gravel road which is connecting Cantwell and Paxson and it was used as a main road to get to Denali Natl Park before the highway was built. Denali Park road is the road in the Denali Natl Park. Denali highway is pretty remote part of the Alaska and you definitely do not want to get a flat on that road without a spare as there are only 3 lodges along this135 miles long gravel road. Yes you guessed correctly we got flat! Lucky for us we had a spare tire (doughnut) and also the first lodge was repairing tires.

Susitna River crossing on Denali highway

 Gold mine

Matanuska Glacier

We checked out the Matanuska Glacier on the way back to Anchorage. Next day we went to Girdwood and Whittier. The weather was rainy so not much to do so we checked out local breweries, bore tide (tidal wave) and a gold mine. We also went to check out Wildlife conservation center and town of Hope next day before we headed down to Seward for some Whale watching and Exit glacier viewing. We stayed in a cabin at Miller's landing which is mile south of Seward. The whale watching tour was perfect finish to this trip as the weather clear up and the sun came out. Also there were bunch of whales and Orcas to see.

Exit Glacier

Exit Glacier

 

Surfing Bore Tide

 

 Kenai Lake

Here are breweries which we visited: