Heatwaves, White Nights and Guns Everywhere. Welcome to Alaska

“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.