Charming, colorful Homer, at the end of Sterling Hwy, sits on beautiful Kachemak Bay amid awe-inspiring mountains. The town began attracting alternative types in the 1960s, and is now home to artists and aging hippies. The visitor center (907-235-7740; www.homeralaska.org; 201 Sterling Hwy; 9am-7pm Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm Sat & Sun) has courtesy phones to book rooms [...]
Haines is Southeast Alaska’s most scenic departure point and a crucial link to the Alcan Hwy for thousands of RVers every summer on their way to Canada’s Yukon Territory and Interior Alaska. The Northwest Trading Company arrived here in 1878, followed by missionaries, gold prospectors and the US Army, which built its first permanent post [...]
Best known for its luxurious Alyeska Ski Resort and the fabled Girdwood Forest Fair (www.girdwoodforestfair.com) - a much-anticipated romp that occurs on the first weekend of July near town, featuring food, crafts and music aplenty - Girdwood is grand. Enfolded in mighty peaks famed for skiing, and overlooking the beauty of Turnagain Arm, the town [...]
North of Anchorage, George Parks Hwy passes through the commuter town of Wasilla, just past the Glenn Hwy (Hwy 1) turnoff. A dramatic detour, the Fishook-Willow Rd between Palmer and Willow goes through Hatcher Pass , an alpine paradise with foot trails, gold-mining artifacts and panoramas of the Talkeetna Mountains.
A spread-out, low-rise city, Fairbanks features extremes of climate, colorful residents and gold fever. In a city that can hit -60°F (-70°C) in the winter, summer days average 70°F (21°C) and occasionally top 90°F (32°C). Downtown is roughly centered on Golden Heart Park, and Cushman St is more or less the main street.
From the crossroad with the Steese Hwy at Fox, just north of Fairbanks, the Elliott Hwy extends 152 miles north and then west to Manley Hot Springs, a small settlement near the Tanana River.
One of the better-preserved boomtowns of the Alaskan mining era, Eagle is a quaint hamlet of log cabins and clapboard houses, inhabited by folks who seem disarmingly cosmopolitan. The original settlement, today called Eagle Village, was established by the Athabascans long before Francois Mercier arrived in the early 1880s and built a trading post in [...]
Commercial fishing has made Dillingham the largest community in the Bristol Bay region. The first cannery was built in 1884 and today Icicle, Peter Pan, Trident and Unisea all operate fish-processing plants in the city, handling mostly salmon.
This breathtaking wilderness area, which includes North America’s highest mountain, attracts a million visitors a year. A single road curves 91 miles through the heart of the park, leading to off-trail hiking opportunities, wildlife and stunning panoramas. The Denali Park Rd can be used only by official shuttle buses, which have limited seating. Numbers of [...]
For most visitors, Delta Junction is notable for a technicality: it proclaims itself the end of the Alcan, as the famous highway joins Richardson Hwy here to complete the route to Fairbanks. The community began as a construction camp and picked up its name from the junction between the two highways. Nowadays it’s an overtly [...]