We’d been talking about visiting Alaska since we started dating. But getting to Alaska from Europe is no joke. Flights alone cost a small fortune, and let’s be honest — Alaska is one of the most expensive parts of the USA. In the end, we made it to Alaska. Below you’ll find how we got there and the best places to see in Alaska.

How We Got to Alaska from Canada

When we got our working visas for Canada, we managed to save enough in three and a half months to travel for a full month — and still had money left over. So we decided to return to Canada for another five months and try to earn enough for a much longer road trip. It worked.

In five months, we saved enough and set off for Hawaii, Alaska, through Canada’s Yukon and British Columbia, and then down into the States. We drove to Alaska non-stop for three days (and three days back to Canada) and spent just over two weeks there. Here are the most beautiful places we visited.

10 Best Places to See in Alaska

Let’s take a look at the best places to see in Alaska and the most beautiful hikes we experienced.

1) Harding Ice Field Trail to Exit Glacier

The best things in life are free. We waited 4 days, praying that the clouds would clear from Seward so we could hit this trail to Exit Glacier. On the fourth day, Mother Nature finally smiled at us. That morning it looked like we’d have to give up on Exit Glacier — it was overcast. But it wasn’t raining, so we decided to drive from Seward to the trailhead, where we spotted a tiny sliver of turquoise sky above the glacier. We decided to risk it. And it paid off.

Thrilled by the sunshine, I practically ran up the trail. The fact that it had about 1,000 metres of elevation gain didn’t dampen our enthusiasm one bit. Someone once told me they call this “nature’s kitsch.” The massive white glacier contrasted with the blue sky and purple wildflowers that covered every green section of the hike. I’d never seen anything like it.

2) Kayaking in Kenai Fjords National Park

The most expensive five hours of my life. When you’re watching every penny, a price tag of $430 per person makes your stomach churn. The deliberation was long, but we knew how it would end. We had to go — because who knows when we’d come back, and whether we’d ever get the chance to kayak near a glacier among fjords again.

Just on the way there, we spotted whales and loads of puffins. While kayaking, we admired sea starfish and sea lions, paddling among chunks of ice. A stunning — and overpriced — experience that you should budget for in advance. If you’re looking for tours and excursions in Alaska, check out GetYourGuide for great options.

3) Hike to Portage Glacier

This easy three-hour hike to Portage Glacier is definitely worth it, even though a horde of mosquitoes will try to eat you alive along the way. You can get relatively close to the glacier and admire the crystal-clear lake with chunks of ice bobbing on the surface.

4) Port Town of Whittier

Our Lonely Planet guidebook described this place as very weird. We didn’t find anything weird about it. It also claimed the weather here is always worse. We didn’t notice that either. What we did enjoy was strolling through the harbour completely on our own.

5) Hidden Gem Between Denali National Park and Anchorage – Hatcher Pass

Hatcher Pass is a hidden gem on the route from Denali National Park to Anchorage. You need to turn off the main road, but you definitely won’t regret it. Suddenly you find yourself in a valley where wisps of cloud drift above green, rolling hills. There’s an old gold mine that’s been turned into a museum, and you can join a guided tour. Our guide was a bit of a character, though.

6) Spend a Few Days in Denali National Park

Denali is home to the highest peak in North America — Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley). Unfortunately, in this impossibly vast national park, you can’t move around freely and must pay $30–50 for a bus. So we decided to hike only in the more accessible areas. We tackled the Triple Lakes Trail, which offers amazing views of endless mountain peaks — sadly, Denali itself isn’t visible from there.

7) Port Town of Haines

Haines is known for its pastel turquoise waters and amazing hikes for mountain lovers. We headed up Mt. Ripinski — a beautiful trail through the forest that leads to a neighbouring peak. From the top, you can see the entire town and its surroundings. The problem was that strong winds picked up at the summit and we were worried it might be dangerous. Luckily, we made it back safely.

8) The Perfectly Turquoise Town of Valdez

Small, turquoise, and magical. That’s my memory of the port town of Valdez, where we made a very brief stop.

9) The Sleepy Town of Homer

The artsy little town of Homer is famous for its galleries of local artists. You might be surprised that, unlike the rest of the Kenai Peninsula, it’s flat.

But that doesn’t take away from its beauty. Head to Homer Spit like we did — a narrow strip of land stretching into the water, where besides the freezing air, you’ll find lovely painted shops, restaurants, and cafés.

10) Fishing Town: City of Kenai

Our guidebook didn’t have much praise for this town. But we were tired and in a bad mood, so we didn’t feel like continuing to Homer. And we were glad we stopped here. It was my greatest cultural experience in Alaska. We headed to the beach, where people don’t swim — instead, they stand in the water catching salmon by waiting for the fish to jump into their enormous nets.

Recommended Guide for Planning Your Alaska Trip 🙂

If you’re planning a trip to Alaska, we highly recommend picking up a good guidebook. It helped us navigate this vast and remote state, find hidden gems, and plan our route efficiently. For accommodation along the way, we booked many of our stays through Booking.com, which often had the best deals even in remote Alaskan towns.

Welcome to our Alaska travel blog! Postcard-perfect mountains, turquoise lakes, and bluish glaciers opened up before us as we arrived on the Kenai Peninsula — the part of Alaska that we all know from those famous, almost kitsch photographs. The part of the land that, in our imaginations, represents Alaska as a whole.

Before we officially entered the Kenai Peninsula, we stopped at the first port town of Whittier on Prince William Sound. The first words we read about this place with 200 residents were: “Whittier is weird — it’s a place like no other on Earth.” To get there, you have to pay about $12 to drive through a railway tunnel, and if you’re unlucky, you might wait up to half an hour because it’s single-lane only.

The Quirky Port Town of Whittier

It didn’t seem all that “weird” to us, though. We set off on a short three-hour hike to a glacier, wandered through the miniature community with its charming harbour and unusually blue water, where there really isn’t much to see, and then hurried back.

This Is the Main Street?

We set up camp just outside Hope, which we planned to explore the next morning for its “typical rural Alaska steeped in history.” That’s what our paper companion — our guidebook navigating us through this northern land — had promised. We didn’t discover much historical about Hope and started seriously doubting the quality of information our Lonely Planet was giving us. And so began one of our less successful days in Alaska.

They Won’t Rent You a Kayak on the Ocean in Alaska

We headed to Seward, where we wanted to go kayaking among the fjords and glaciers. It’s one of the most promoted experiences here in Alaska, and there’s no way to get there other than with a guided tour. If you’re not an expert kayaker, nobody will rent you a kayak for the fjords. And we’d only sat in one once or twice before. But it costs around $400 per person. We were already prepared to eat roots for the rest of the trip, because we didn’t plan on coming back here anytime soon and missing this would have been a real regret.

Kayaking completely changed our plans. Unfortunately, the nearest available spots weren’t until several days later — Saturday. So we had to change our plans once again and go explore the rest of the Kenai Peninsula, coming back in a few days.

How the Mormons Tried to Convert Us

“Have you heard of the Mormons?” We were sitting in a public park in the City of Kenai after an exhausting journey, grilling freshly caught salmon. Two friendly Mormons joined us for about twenty minutes and told us how they’re sent around the world as missionaries. They’d just spent six months in Whitehorse, Canada, before being transferred here to Alaska.

“Do you know the Bible? Well, it’s a bit outdated. We have our own Bible too, and since you’re so nice, we’ll give you one.” The Mormon pulled out a Bible and wrote his number inside. “If you ever need anything on your journey, just call — we have missionaries all across America.” They said goodbye. We kept the card and the Bible. It might come in handy in Utah.

Every Evening We Cruise Through Towns with Other RVs Looking for a Place to Sleep

After booking our kayaks, we decided we wouldn’t sleep in campsites anymore and found a spot in a supermarket car park where we slept in the car. We certainly weren’t alone — we’d already noticed that as soon as eight o’clock hits, RVs and motorhomes start cruising around town looking for a free spot to park up for the night.

These motorhomes are no joke, by the way. They cost around $300,000 and only get about one mile per gallon. And inside, they look like a hotel. “Compared to that, our bed in Red Chiquita is hardly luxury,” Lukáš commented when we first saw the hotel-grade bathrooms in these huge beasts roaming American roads.

Homer Is a Town of Art and the Spit

Homer is a little town of art. If you wanted, you could spend an entire day wandering through small galleries by local artists. That was our entertainment too. There’s not much else to do here — the surroundings are fairly flat and the weather isn’t the friendliest. Still, it’s worth visiting. There’s a thin strip of land jutting out into the ocean that they call “the Spit,” and at first glance you understand why. You feel like a stronger gust of wind or a bigger wave could sweep it away, and it’s hard to believe this scattered, thin, winding strip has managed to hold on in the water for so long.

When it’s not windy (which happens rarely), it’s pleasant to stroll along. This curious strip is lined with colourful fishing shacks, the air is a mix of fish and salt, and occasionally a sweet breeze drifts over from the local pancake house. People walk around with ice cream as if it weren’t about twelve degrees out. We arrived to perfect weather — sunshine, blue skies, and supposedly the highest temperatures of the summer. But even so, when we forgot our jumper in the car, we had to dash right back.

We returned to Seward a day early so we could hike the Harding Icefield Trail, which is supposedly one of the most beautiful hikes in Alaska. But the blue skies had turned into persistent rain, the mountains hid behind clouds, and we spent our day crammed into one of the three cafés in town with other tourists.

We were afraid the next day would be the same and ruin our whole kayaking trip. I couldn’t sleep — every raindrop hitting our car woke me up, and every splash stirred up frustration and sadness inside me.

No Gold Mining Here, but Plenty of Gold Diggers

At seven in the morning, it wasn’t raining. We sat ready for our biggest adventure in the office of the company taking us on the trip. There were only five of us, so we quickly boarded the boat and headed out to the ocean. The boat bounced on the waves, and soon we spotted the first whales. We watched these enormous creatures elegantly surfacing and spouting water. Almost as if they knew they were being watched, they swam around the boat while we stood frozen, mesmerised by this whale performance.

Paddling among small chunks of ice, watching sea lions and sea stars was an incredible experience, even though the sky was overcast and clouds hovered over the mountains. Nobody else around. We often think America has no history because we forget about the indigenous people. And that’s because they left no trace on the land. It remained untouched. But thousands of years ago, they saw it from their canoes just as we saw it on that cold day. This realisation filled me with a feeling of something almost sacred, rocking with five other people in a kayak, quietly observing the mighty power of nature.

The Most Beautiful Hike of Our Lives

We still didn’t leave Seward after that. We hoped the next day would clear up and we’d be able to finish off the Kenai Peninsula with one more experience — the magnificent view of Exit Glacier, the only glacier accessible from the mainland.

“I’m done with this. Let’s go.” I opened my eyes in the morning to dark clouds covering nearly all the mountains around us, the water in the harbour had changed from turquoise to grey as it reflected the sky, and on top of it all, it was starting to rain again.

We were about to leave, annoyed at having lost part of a travel day, but then we decided it was on the way anyway and maybe the weather would be better 20 minutes down the road near the glacier.

The car park didn’t look promising. “But look — it’s breaking up over there.” I pointed above the glacier. Dark clouds were everywhere, except right over our destination, where a patch of blue sky had appeared and sunbeams were dancing on the ice of Exit Glacier.

So we set off. We took it at a killer pace. The hike was supposed to take 6–8 hours in total. We did it in 4. By the time we were a quarter of the way up, the sky was already clearing. Before long there wasn’t a single cloud, and we were enjoying blue skies that contrasted with the white glacier and purple wildflowers scattered all around. In the year we’d spent in North America, we’d seen a lot — but nothing as beautiful as this hike. When you reach the top, you’re supposedly treated to a view of what the Ice Age looked like. Harsh and breathtaking. Once again, we confirmed that the best things in life are free.

A bonus hike that didn’t make it into the main story — one we did on the way from Homer to Seward:

Planning a Trip to Alaska? Try Our Favourite Guidebook

“You know we just smuggled across the border everything we confirmed we didn’t have? A weapon (bear spray is considered a weapon), alcohol, fruit, and commercial products (we’re travelling with a box full of our sunglasses brand),” Lukáš says to me. Welcome to Alaska — or rather, welcome to the nerve-wracking experience of crossing the Canada–USA border. We’d crossed it many times over the past year and always had that uneasy feeling in our stomachs. This time it was even worse, because they forgot to stamp our passports in Hawaii. Fortunately, the impossible happened — the border guards at the Yukon–Alaska crossing were actually quite friendly despite the glaring issues with our passports.

“We should have at least hidden some of it.” I think out loud, but we’re already zooming through Alaska in our Red Chiquita. After 3,000 km of rain and insane Yukon roads, we’re glad Alaska is showing us its sunny face. It’s already late evening on the Fourth of July, and Alaska, like the rest of the USA, is celebrating Independence Day — but here near the border, we don’t notice a thing and honestly forget about it entirely.

North Pole Town and Santa’s House — a failed commercial gimmick

We buy a campsite in the first sizeable forest town, Tok, and suddenly realise it’s almost midnight, yet the sun is still shining. We crawl into our car and try to fall asleep. We’ve been struggling with sleep for days — we couldn’t manage to black out the car, and the sun simply doesn’t set. This problem would follow us across nearly all of Alaska.

The car becomes an impenetrable jungle of brochures we’ve collected from visitor centres, and we try (often in vain) to find something interesting in them.

“North Pole Town — the place where it’s Christmas all year round. We have to go! They’ve even got a Santa Claus street and Santa’s House!” My pure excitement dissolves into utter disappointment when we arrive at the sweltering little town where Santa’s House is actually a shop selling Christmas trinkets staffed by a guy in a Santa costume.

“I was expecting elves putting presents together,” I sigh, and we drive off with the same gusto we arrived with.

Forest everywhere you look. Where are the mountains?

Fairbanks doesn’t exactly thrill us either. A bigger town in the middle of the forest. Forest as far as the eye can see. According to our guidebook, the biggest attraction here is the Visitor Centre.

Still, we enjoy Fairbanks in a completely different way — we visit family friends here, and even stay at their place. We have our first Alaskan salmon with them, sample local beer, and for the first time in ages, sleep in a real bed with blackout curtains. Let there be darkness.

Long summer days bring unexpectedly high temperatures

The next day we set off on a hike recommended by Tony and his family, who asked: “Do you have a gun?” We’d hear this question many more times. Bear spray is considered a useless toy here — people go hiking with firearms.

On the Angel Rocks hike, we’re tormented far more by mosquitoes and unbearable heat that not only permeates the air but radiates from the ground itself. Our conviction that Alaska would be cold melted away in 32 °C (90 °F). The trail leads us to rocky outcrops on a hill in the middle of an endless forest. There’s nothing around — just trees.

“They’ve got the same weeds we have back home. Only the trees are somehow thinner.” I observe the scrawny tops of coniferous and deciduous trees the whole way down to the car park. We also drive out to Chena Hot Springs, but that doesn’t blow us away either. We keep looking for mountains and turquoise glaciers — we know they’re not here, but they’re deeply rooted in our imagination of what Alaska should look like. To cheer ourselves up, we buy Thai food in town, but with the first bites we realise we’ve blown our daily budget on something that’s more likely to make us ill. It happens. Time to move on.

Off-key singing as a weapon against bears

Denali National Park is the largest park in the USA, but only a small portion is accessible to regular visitors. You can only drive to the entrance, and if you want to go deeper, you’ll need to pay $30–50 for a bus. We opted for the 17 km Triple Lakes Trail hike starting from the Visitor Centre. We parked at the trail’s end and took a free shuttle to the start. And then we realised we didn’t have our bear spray. There was nowhere to buy it and no turning back. We didn’t encounter a single bear — probably scared off by our five hours of terrifyingly off-key singing.

Alaskans love guns, and their presence terrifies us

Not everything goes to plan while travelling, and our failed attempt to see Mt. McKinley proves it. We woke up at a campsite near another trail that was supposed to reward us with a stunning view of North America’s highest peak. Instead, the sky clouded over and it started raining. We left the park and sped towards Anchorage. “WOW!” I screamed, and Lukáš swerved the car to the side. That white massif had terrifyingly gleamed in the rearview mirror. Mt. McKinley (Denali) in all its glory had poked out from behind the clouds for a few minutes, shining like a giant hilly moon as the sun’s rays hit it. We turned the car around and raced back to a restaurant that was supposed to have a great view.

After ten minutes of driving, it had already vanished. We decided to sit down anyway, rest, and drown our sorrows in our first Alaskan burger. But rest was out of the question — locals started pouring into the restaurant, and we couldn’t tear our eyes away from the guns everyone had tucked into their waistbands. We’ll never get used to that.

Praying with every mile that the car holds together

I feel like we’ve been teleported to Norway. That’s the effect Hatcher Pass has on us. On the road from Denali National Park to Palmer, grass-covered hills start emerging, draped in clouds as thick as pea soup while rain drums on the car. The road is rough — we pray with every mile that we won’t shake loose some vital car part. We start regretting the detour since we probably won’t see anything. We could have taken the shorter route to Anchorage and saved ourselves several hours and a tank of petrol. But then, by some stroke of luck, we stumble upon an old gold mine. The clouds part slightly, and small wisps drift between the mountains above the tiny miners’ cabins.

Anchorage is a rough city surrounded by mountains

Anchorage feels like a rough neighbourhood surrounded by mountains, with a charming centre and a modern museum. Our guidebook claims it’s one of the most multicultural places in the USA, with up to 90 languages spoken. We didn’t notice that, but we certainly didn’t miss the characters causing a ruckus in car parks at midnight, or the countless homeless people lying on the pavements. Fortunately, the supermarket car park where we spent the night was quiet, and the rain lulled us to sleep.

Soap bubbles and kids’ games to the rescue

Although the rain had stopped, our mood took a nosedive in the morning. The fatigue from all the kilometres we’d covered was catching up with us. We set off to climb one of the nearby hills, but after twenty minutes of ascending, we discovered the trails near the car park were poorly marked and we’d accidentally wandered onto a military base. And then it started raining again.

The museum saved us. We explored an excellent section about Alaska’s Indigenous peoples, but we won’t lie — what truly lifted our spirits was the children’s section. Blowing soap bubbles is fantastic therapy. As they say: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.