After the bear-y exciting time at Katmai, it was finally time for our last park in Alaska; Glacier Bay National Park! We had attempted to make this our first park when we got to Alaska, but once we drove into Skagway, we had learned that the ferry tends to sell out a week or so in advance which is why we continued on and decided to hit it up later. And it turns out, it was even easier for us…
Ohhhh, Katmai National Park. If you google “bears eating salmon,” you will most definitely get images of grizzly bears at Katmai. Brooks Camp is a huge area for salmon runs, which leads to this special place being home for dozens and dozens of grizzlies…. which of course, means it’s one of the most popular parks to visit. However, this is another park that you have to fly into. We flew with Katmai Air from Anchorage. The park is directly south…
My namesake National Park, Lake Clark, was next on this adventure! This is one of the parks you have to fly into. There are no roads in or to this park. It is an undeveloped area full of lakes, streams, volcanos, rivers, mountains, and it includes the headwaters for the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery; making it a haven for fishers. We flew to this park with Lake & Pen Air from their small office near the main airport. It…
Next up on the Alaskan adventure, we headed to Kenai Fjords National Park after our time in Denali. Over half of Kenai Fjords is covered by glaciers; together all called the Harding Icefield, which is why the park itself is primarily experienced on the water. From Denali and Anchorage, Seward is only a couple hours away on a beautiful coastal highway. Seward, the park headquarters, is a cute port town that is bustling with tourists. We got to enjoy this…
After my disappointing experience with the Arctic Parks, Mike and I headed to the crown jewel of Alaska; Denali National Park. We arrived late morning, so we grabbed my Junior Ranger booklet, talked to the rangers, and made a game plan.We’ve been walking the fine line of spontaneity and still getting tickets/reservations/etc. Sometimes it bites us in the butt, but we got veryyyy lucky and were able to reserve the very last campsite for the following evening at Wonder Lake…
From Wrangell St Elias, we headed up north to check out the Arctic parks; Gates of the Arctic and Kobuk Valley. The first thing you should know about these parks… they are ridiculously hard to get to. For both parks, the majority of people fly into the parks. And most of those people just do a flightseeing tour and that’s about it. It is so so so expensive. Gates of the Arctic was a tiny bit easier for us to…
After an extremely long drive from Washington, through Canada, with many $100+ gas fill ups, new tires, and more…. we made it to Alaska! We tried to visit Glacier Bay first, but we found out that the ferry to the park was booked for more than a week. So, we headed up another 15 or so hours up to the largest National Park in the United States… Wrangell-St. Elias! This park is 13 million acres; larger than the 6 smallest…