Category: Alaska Toursim

The residents of King Salmon are mostly government employees, living in a vast, wide, open landscape on the beautiful Nak- nek River. The town is a little rough around the edges and, along with the relative lack of people, this gives King Salmon a quiet, edge-of-the-world appeal.

Ketchikan, the first stop of the Alaska Marine Highway, is a thin town: several miles long, never more than 10 blocks wide and crammed with Alaskan character, adventure and the scenery you came looking for.

Jutting into the Gulf of Alaska, the Kenai Peninsula is about the size of Belgium. Fewer than a tenth of Alaska’s residents inhabit this southcentral extremity, and with mountains, glaciers, rivers, lakes, fjords, forests and fish galore, the area is an unparalleled recreational playground.

South of Seward is Kenai Fjords National Park. The park’s main features are the 917-sq-mile Harding Icefield and the tidewater glaciers that calve into the sea. Even though it’s making a fast retreat, Exit Glacier, at the end of Exit Glacier Rd, is still the most popular attraction. There’s a visitor center and a paved 0.25-mile trail to a glacier overlook. Hikers can climb a difficult 5 miles to the edge of the ice field – worth it for spectacular views. The park visitor center is in Seward.

Stand on Homer Spit and look south, and an alluring wonderland sprawls before you: a luxuriantly green coastline, sliced by fjords and topped by sparkling glaciers and rugged peaks. This is Kachemak Bay State Park, which, along with Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park to the south, includes 350,000 acres of idyllic wilderness accessible only by bush plane or boat. It was Alaska’s first state park. According to locals, it remains the best.

There’s no prettier capital in the country than Alaska’s Juneau, whose historic downtown clings to a mountainside beneath snowcapped peaks and its narrow streets lead you past a bustling waterfront. The rest of the city spreads north into the Mendenhall Valley. Juneau is also Alaska’s cruise-ship capital and the gateway to many attractions, including Glacier Bay National Park and Admiralty Island National Monument.

Hoonah is the largest Tlingit village in Southeast Alaska. The Huna, a Tlingit tribe, have lived in the Icy Strait area for hundreds of years, and legend tells of them being forced out of Glacier Bay by an advancing glacier. A store was built on the site of Hoonah in 1883, and an established community has been here ever since.