Alaska is on the way to nowhere. It’s not the kind of place you drop into accidentally. And the drive to get here from anywhere is nothing short of a schlepp. But for us, overlanding Alaska has been well worth making the considerable (second) attempt to get here. The wildlife, the scenery, the nature and the wilderness are stunning. The adventure activities and opportunities are endless. And we’re having a blast meeting up with other overlanders. Here’s our tale of a scoot around the much-driven southern half of Alaska, stopping to do a bit of fishing, to see the wildlife, and to ogle at the odd glacier or two…
Anchored down in…
“Oh Anchorage. Anchored down in… “🎶. The song rings around in your head when you first start seeing the road distance signs on the Alcan highway. Anchorage (not the capital… you did know the capital is Juneau, didn’t you 😉?) is a pleasant city to visit in summer with literally never-ending daylight, pretty waterside/ocean-inlets and surrounded by mountains. We spent a bit of time wandering the streets, gathering ‘intelligence’ on stuff to do around the whole State, and renting some bikes for a cycle ride along the popular coastal trail.
By happy coincidence we met-up with our friend Dani in Anchorage. She is a commercial pilot and just happened to be on a route through Alaska, so it was awesome to meet up with her. Nice though Anchorage was, we really wanted to head south to the Kenai Peninsula.
Homer
On The Kenai, we first blasted the 370 km all the way down to the end of the road. It’s a beautiful drive of rivers, lakes and glaciers especially in the northern section before Soldotna. At the bottom of the peninsula sits Homer (no, not the Simpsons guy).
Homer village is set in stunning scenery. It has a remote, end-of-the-world kind of feeling about the place, but it’s nevertheless very main-stream touristy in summer. Fishing is one of the big things here. At the end of the road is a 6km sand-spit sticking out into the icy waters. People flock here in their droves for the off-shore halibut season and to eat ice-cream.
The whole Homer area is a cool place to hang out for a while and watch wildlife. In much of North America, eagle-spotting is a test of patience and good fortune. Not around Homer it isn’t. There’s a large local delegation of bald eagles and we really enjoyed sitting on the beach on summer solstice night, watching them soaring, nesting, scavenging and winding each other up. These awe-inspiring birds almost outnumber the seagulls around here (okay… slight exaggeration, but they are plentiful) and it’s a privilege to get so close to them.
Around Homer
It’s not only the wildlife that’s a welcoming sight here. The locals are friendly too! Melisse contacted us via social media to kindly invite us to her home. We very much enjoyed hearing their first-hand insight into Homer life and community. Thanks very much for your hospitality, Melisse and Dave!
From Homer there’s only one way to drive: back up the road you just came down. Just 20km north we hit a little bit of a milestone in our overlanding. At Anchor Point we reached the most westerly point it’s possible to drive to in the Americas. In fact, it’s the furthest point west it’s possible to drive to on the planet! Of course, it doesn’t feel much different to any other beach in Alaska, but hey-ho… it’s a ‘thing’ we did.
Something (not so) fishy going on
Fishing of all kinds is huge in Alaska. Like… monster heeuuuge!! Everyone seems to do it. People come here from all over North America, maybe even the world, with the sole purpose of just fishing. The off-shore fishing for halibut and sea salmon is legendary. The river fishing for trout and salmon is equally popular. The truly skilled, purist fisherman takes a float-plane out to a remote spot on the wilderness lakes. Clearly we’re not in that league. In fact, we’re not even in the junior little-league. We’ve never really fished in our lives! But we fancy giving it a go, and this is the place to do it. So we booked an instructor/guide to take us fly fishing on the Kenai River near Cooper Landing.
Before we get to the actual fishing bit… bear with me for a brief digression. On arrival to meet our guide, we were grouped with Grant and Drew, two nice young chaps on holiday from Texas. Bizarrely, it turns out we had actually met Grant at the Llano Overlanding show way back in Texas 2019!!! How spooky is that???? 5,000km and three years apart, on a random fishing trip in Alaska, we meet someone we know!!!
Anyway… back to the fishing. The trout and salmon are said to be so bountiful in the Kenai River that ‘everyone gets a catch’. Well that was before we got there 😊. We were provided with all the gear… rods, flies, those trendy waterproof dungaree-waders, boots etc, etc, etc. Oh, we absolutely looked the part. The casual passer-by might have mistakenly been given the impression that we knew what we were doing.
But despite a patient instructor and a well-populated river, we caught… if you don’t count the three twigs I managed to snag on my hook… nothing. Nada. Zilch. We tried fishing for trout from a boat down the middle of the river. We tried fishing for salmon, wading into the waters on the (allegedly) salmon-popular bends of the river. Marcus did get a bite, but the slippery little critter got away. Grant and Drew both caught trout, so they’re clearly out there. But we were snubbed by the fish 🤷♀️🤷♂️. Whatever! No offence taken, Mr Trout. Despite the dismal failure on our part, it was a fun time and we learned a lot. Maybe we’ll give it another go sometime. Or maybe not.
Seward
Onwards overlanding Alaska and there’s another exceptionally beautiful spot at the northern end of The Kenai: the fjord town of Seward. This whole area blew us away with its spectacular scenery. It would be no exaggeration to say the place is literally littered with glaciers dripping off the mountains and glistening in the sun. Everywhere we look there’s a jaw-dropping glacial vista. The Exit Glacier is an easy and popular one to hike to, as in Byron, but there are plenty more. On the drive between Seward and the Portage Valley the gob-smacking scenery continues unabated… more icy-blue rivers and lakes, snow-capped mountains, and a glacier around every corner.
Alaska is all about glaciers…
Glacial Pace
So as we’ve may have vaguely alluded to… there are more glaciers here than you can shake an icy stick at. And they are indeed spectacular pieces of nature. Many can only be admired from a distance, from the air or from the fjord waters. But several are accessible by a short hike. Where they are reasonably accessible, we have taken the opportunity to hike either to the glacier itself, or at least to a viewpoint from which the glacier can be properly seen.
The big problem right now, is that the glaciers are almost all (with Meares being a notable exception) receding. Fast. Some glaciers have a string of signs down the valley below them, indicating where the ice used to reach in a particular year. Some are now receding as much as 869 metres (2,851 ft) per year (see here). In the Portage Valley near Whittier, a visitor centre was built in 1986 with full-on glacier views across the lake. Today, the glacier has receded so far that it is no longer visible from the Visitor Centre at all. It has receded back up the valley. It doesn’t take a PhD in glaciology to work out that if you want to see a whole bunch of stunning glaciers in your lifetime, you need to get here sooner rather than later.
A ‘Gaggle’ of Rigs
Another great part of our time overlanding Alaska so far has been overlander meet-ups. Back when we were overlanding in South America we used to have ‘lucky’ encounters or pre-arranged meet-ups with groups of overlanders all the time. There are ‘hubs’ such as Cuzco in Peru, Salta in Argentina, Medellin in Colombia where overlanders tend to spend time, generating meet-up opportunities. Since then, we’ve met relatively few other overlanders, that is… until Alaska!! After two summers closed for covid, Alaska 2022 has become an overlanders’ mecca. Soooo many travellers from all over the world are up here this year, like us, making up for lost time.
We’ve met too many fab peeps over the last few weeks to mention everyone, but a few highlights spring to mind: in Anchorage on just our second night in the State, we met up with Ivan from Spain (@iplfotografia) who we last saw in Arizona, December 2019. Ivan introduced us to the inspirational Heather and Jon (@vermonster) who, before setting off as overlanders to drive around the world, had previously sailed around the world in their own yacht. Big respect!!
In Seward we had particularly ‘rich pickings’ on the catch-up with Monika and Igor (@kamiontravel) last seen in Anza Borrego, California and before that, in B.C. Canada. Also in Seward we met a cool young Canadian/Aussie couple Mack and Laura (@mackandlaura) overlanding in a fab red Land Cruiser who dazzled us with their amazing coffee-maker-gadget-to-die-for. Another Seward meet-up was couple Karsten and Sandie (@ewaldontour) who, it turns out, we last met at the overland show back in 2015 in Germany.
Whittier
Back on the road… just beyond Portage is the fjord port of Whittier. And yes, of course, it’s set in yet another extraordinarily scenic location (yawn… when will it ever end? 😉). Whittier was built as a military base during WWII for the battle for the Pacific and this really shows in the style of buildings here. The scenery might be pretty, but not here the cutesie stylised abodes of other Alaskan destinations. Here there’s a distinctly utilitarian, Cold War feel to the buildings.
As Whittier port is surrounded by a steep arc of mountain peaks, there is very little land to build on. The population of just under 300 people all live in just two concrete tower buildings. It’s not naturally the most accessible location in the world, but they solved that by blasting a tunnel through from the Portage Valley. A single-width tunnel might have been tickety-boo for 1942. But this single-width tunnel, now shared between a 21st Century volume of two-directional road traffic and a train line, is in theory a bit of a disaster waiting to happen. But fear not… potential disaster is averted by a strict schedule for each direction. Get there at the wrong time and you could wait up to an hour for your next departure-slot driving down the train-track through the tunnel.
Just another day overlanding Alaska…
After doing a couple of short hikes here, Whittier is the port from which we leave Kenai Peninsula and move north. We’re taking a ferry across the, yup… you guessed it… extraordinarily scenic Prince William Sound to Valdez. From there we’ll take the Richardson Highway north.
Stay tuned for more tales of overlanding Alaska with… let’s hazard a wild guess here… yet more stunning scenery and glaciers maybe?🤔