A grand expanse of forest and alps sweeping from Anchorage to Fairbanks and Canada, the Interior has been immortalized by poets, picked over by miners and popularized in the quirky 1990s TV series Northern Exposure. Here is Alaska’s heartland: dogsleds and gold pans, roadhouses and fish wheels, moose on the side of the road and [...]
Since its period in the late 1800s as a winter retreat for fishers and prospectors, Tenakee Springs has evolved into a rustic village known for its slow and relaxed pace of life. On the east side of Tenakee Inlet, the settlement is little more than a ferry dock, a row of houses on pilings and [...]
Taylor Hwy runs 161 miles north from Tetlin Junction, 13 miles east of Tok on the Alcan, through the lovable tourist trap of Chicken and on to the sleepy, historic community of Eagle on the Yukon River. Save for recent wildfire scarring it’s a scenic drive, ascending Mt Fairplay, Polly Summit and American Summit, all [...]
At Mile 98.7, a side road heads north to this interesting town. It was a miners supply center in 1901, and later a riverboat station and a railroad-construction headquarters. Since the 1950s, Mt McKinley mountaineers have made Talkeetna their staging post, and today the town is the most interesting along the George Parks Hwy by [...]
The superscenic but severely lonely Steese Hwy follows an old miners’ trail 162 miles from Fairbanks to the Athabascan village of Circle, on the Yukon River. This hilly and winding road is paved for the first 53 miles, and then has a good gravel base to the mining settlement of Central. In the final 30 [...]
The Southeast is as close as Alaska comes to continental USA, but most of it is inaccessible by road. It’s possible to fly to the panhandle for a quick visit, but a better option if you can spare a week or two is to cruise the Inside Passage, a waterway made up of thousands of [...]
Southcentral Alaska is where Alaskans and travelers alike come to play. There are mountains, glaciers, good fishing, great hiking and kayaking and lots of campgrounds to stay at. Even better, there are roads between towns and other regions of the state, making Southcentral Alaska one of the most accessible places to visit.
Soldotna, at the junction of the Sterling and Kenai Spur Hwys, would be just another ugly, overcommercialized roadside-service center, interchangeable with a zillion other American towns, save for one fact: a river runs through it, filled to bursting with the biggest salmon on the planet. Indeed, the world’s largest sport-caught king salmon was reeled in [...]
The northern terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway, Skagway was a gold-rush town infamous for its lawlessness. In 1887 the population was two; 10 years later it was Alaska’s largest city, with 20, 000 residents. Today, Skagway survives entirely on tourism and gets packed when a handful of cruise ships pull in and thousands passengers [...]
Russians established Southeast Alaska’s first nonindigenous settlement here in 1799, and the town flourished on fur. Today Sitka sees itself as both the cultural center of the Southeast and its most beautiful city, because it’s the only one facing the Pacific Ocean.