Alaska in Photos

Here is a gallery of highlights from our three weeks in Alaska. Photos can’t possibly do The Last Frontier justice, but click the images for the full-size slideshow and complete captions. Stay tuned for more detailed information on the sites we visited.

: Salmon Creek Cabins in Seward.

: Hiking the Harding Icefield Trail in Kenai Fjords National Park. First big hike, 9 miles round-trip and 3,000 ft elevation gain!

: Exit Glacier viewed from the trail.

: The Harding Icefield is 300 square miles of solid ice that spawns over 40 glaciers.

: Catch of the day in Seward.

: Rain and clouds added ambiance to our 4-hour wildlife viewing cruise in Kenai Fjords.

: Sea otters stole the show during our Kenai Fjords wildlife cruise.

: Carlo Creek Cabins near Denali National Park.

: Denali Park Road winds around hillsides.

: Polychrome Pass along the Denali Park Road.

: Close encounter with Mr. Caribou.

: Only 30% of visitors ever see Denali. When we visited she was completely cloudless for the first time in 5 weeks.

: Awestruck.

: Hiking down from our picnic spot overlooking Denali.

: Our second Denali Park hike at Savage River.

: The free sled dog demonstration at the Denali kennels is well worth a visit.

: Dirty Explorer after crossing the 135-mile gravel Denali Highway.

: Gold Rush museum in Copper Center.

: Klutina River near where Neil’s ancestors set up camp during the gold rush of 1898.

: Best Guest Cabin ever! Willow Lake Bed and Breakfast. This is the view and the hand-built cabin. Jim and Linda are fantastic hosts!

: Getting our tire patched in Chitina after taking on some road shrapnel.

: The silver lining of the flat tire was that we got to see a moose as we limped back to town on the spare.

: At the end of a 62-mile gravel road you reach this footbridge that you have to cross to get to the town of McCarthy in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

: Air is also a popular way to get to and/or sightsee in Wrangell-St. Elias.

: St. Elias Alpine Guides provides a great informative tour of the Kennecott Copper mill buildings.

: Hard hats required!

: “Downtown” McCarthy, Alaska provides everything you need and some great people watching as well.

: The trucks of McCarthy.

: Kennicott and Root glaciers viewed from the Bonanza Mine Trail

: The Bonanza Mine trail is 9 miles round-trip, ascends 3,800 feet and gets steeper the higher you go. Pure evil.

: The torture is worth the view from above the abandoned Bonanza Mine buildings.

: Back in McCarthy, we rewarded ourselves with dinner at the Michelin-recommended McCarthy Lodge.

: The road portion of our trip covered 1,340 miles.

: Off to Juneau on board a 737 Combi. The front half is cargo and the back half is passengers, which provides a unique boarding experience.

: Glacier Bay National Park was a major contrast in vegetation from the central portion of Alaska.

: This is the skeleton of “Snow” a humpback whale that was killed by a cruise ship in Glacier Bay in 2001.

: Sunset from the deck at Glacier Bay Lodge.

: Our first humpback whale sighting. Pretty soon we were seeing them every day.

: Brown Bear on shore.

: The sun came out just in time for us to enter Johns Hopkins Inlet.

: Johns Hopkins Glacier sent giant chunks of ice into the water before our eyes. The wall of ice is 250 feet tall.

: One of the deckhands fished an iceberg out of the water so everyone could get a look at the 300 year old ice.

: Here comes the M/V LeConte to ferry us to Juneau.

: Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. They provide free guided tours, great random find.

: We climbed the Mt. Roberts Trail and then got a free trip back down on the tram with purchase of lunch in the dining room. Otherwise a round trip is $35.

: Broadway in Skagway, the center of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.

: This mannequin displays how much baggage each prospector had to carry up and over the pass by hand.

: Later, a train was added over White Pass and it still runs today as a scenic railroad. We took the 3-hour trip just across the border into Canada and back down into Skagway.