I’m back earlier than usual, trying to catch up with our travel stories. In the last post, we visited Valdez and its surrounding. After few days in Valdez, we got itchy feet again and hit the road.
Alaska is vast and there are not many roads around Alaska. Overlanding Alaska, you barely see any of Alaska but in a small fraction of Alaska that is reachable by roads, the views are spectacular. Having less road, means going from Valdez to anywhere in Kenai Peninsula, will take time. We had to go back north to reach the Alaska highway and continue west, deeper into Alaska, just to be able to drive south again and visit Kenai Peninsula.
That’s pretty much the most western point you can go into Alaska. To reach areas like Katmai national park, where the famous National Geographic documentary has been recorded with wild Grizzlies, you need to go with a plane.
We were overlanding the Alaska and we were planning to see as much as roads can take us and Kenai had a lot to see.
We had epic view even from the Alaska highway on the way to Anchorage, state capital of the Alaska. We had to stop in Anchorage to collect few things that we ordered from Amazon, including our new Drone before getting into the Kenai Peninsula.
After doing some shopping in Anchorage, we headed the road south, next to the Turnagain Arm and headed toward Portage Glacier and Whittier. The views were just out of this world. The proximity of the Glaciers to the main roads were hard to believe.
We had a quick stop on the west side of the peninsula and then headed east in the search of a quiet camp site with a great view to relax and work for few days. We found a great spot next to a turquoise lake close to the Cooper Landing and stayed there for three days! Between being sick for most of the time in Alaska and having few projects to work on and waiting for our amazon orders, Alaska forced us to slow down and stay in the same place for few days and we really enjoyed it. We also learned quickly how to find a mosquito free camp spots to be able to enjoy the views too.
After few days in an epic camp spot, we headed west toward Kenai town and then south to Homer, where the road ends in Alaska.
Along the way, besides enjoying epic views, we enjoyed stopping next to every creek and river, and believe me, there are many of them around and watch different types of salmons swimming up stream. That’s really an epic scene to watch, especially in shallow creeks, where it is extremely hard to swim.
Watching locals fishing in the rivers were great too. On top of that, there are lots of nice brewery in Alaska to try. According to law, they can only sell their beers in their own spots, so finding them and trying different beers, local to the area was great too.
And we finally got to the end of the road in Homer!
I tried as much Halibut as I could in Alaska and in Homer. The taste of the good Fish and Chips and a perfect beer in Alaska will be with us for a long time. From Homer, we could only go back north. We had another epic camp spot between Homer and Kenai with amazing sunset views over the Katmai and said goodbye to Kenai and headed north toward the majestic Denali.
We headed north, toward Denali National Park, but the weather wasn’t great, we waited for few days but had no luck with the weather. It was raining all day everyday. So we decided to leave the Denali area and head east on the Denali highway toward Top of the world highway and Canada.
Views on these roads are unbelievable., Vast scenery and no man made structure for hundreds of kilometers. Untouched beauties with changing scenery on each turn. We had an epic drive and enjoyed every minute of it. Our last stop before crossing the border was a small town called Chicken on Alaskan side. From there we had our most beautiful and smooth border crossing into Canada. From here we have to prepare for one of our most epic drives yet in our trip. More on this, in our next post. Till then take care and enjoy life.
