ALASKA

Alaska is a different world, truly. We’re so blessed to include Alaska as our 49th state because this land features the most unspoiled, unreal beauty I’ve ever seen. 

You know how you watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and you’re like “dang, I wish I could go to New Zealand, that place looks unreal.” You don’t have to! We literally have those magnificent mountains in our own country, on the tippy-top of our own continent. (Alaska is on the same tectonic plate as New Zealand, I guess??) Not only does Alaska offer killer views and a myriad of outdoor activities, but you’ll also see plenty of wildlife. We saw moose crossing the road, a bald eagle flew over our heads, and a sea otter floated by on its back. In the summer, you can see bears, orcas, and humpback whales.

There are three major cities in Alaska: Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. Juneau is the capital, but go Google Juneau and see where it is on a map. Like… you’re not even in Alaska, you’re in coastal Canada. And Fairbanks is way too far north. Fairbanks will try to get you to visit because, since it’s so far up there, it’s the best place to view the Northern Lights. But I’m just gonna tell you: we stayed a full week in Alaska during peak Northern Lights season, and we never saw them. (I was heartbroken, but I did wind up seeing the Northern Lights a year later… in Fargo, North Dakota??? On Labor Day???) Take my advice: for your first time in Alaska, go to Anchorage. It’s the biggest city by far, but that’s not saying much… the population is about the same as Huntsville, Alabama. Unsurprisingly, not many people live in Alaska. In the depths of winter, they get five hours of sunlight. The same goes for nighttime at the peak of summer, but in winter everything’s dark and blue and closed-up.

So, weirdly enough, this is where I convince you to go to Alaska in the winter.

There aren’t many tourists in the winter. Many places are closed or open for limited daylight hours, but all the cool stuff (dog sledding, glaciers, skiing) is still open. Don’t go during Christmas, go in February. Since Alaska is so far north, their daylight changes are more drastic: in the Lower 48, in February, our days get longer by about a minute and a half each day. In Alaska in February, their days get longer by five minutes each day. So it’s cold, it’s snowy and beautiful, there aren’t any tourists, and you’ll have more daylight than you think. Plus, you MIGHT see the Northern Lights.

I thought the Northern Lights just stayed blazin’ up in Alaska, but it turns out the Northern Lights are a force of nature, kind of like tornadoes in Alabama. Will there be tornadoes in Alabama in the spring? Yes, absolutely. Should you plan a whole visit to Alabama for a week in April for the purpose of seeing one? Absolutely not. But don’t worry, there will still be plenty to see!

WHAT I SAW

Happy Trails Kennel

I love Balto. No, like… I **LOVE** Balto. What’s Balto, you ask? You mean you don’t remember the 1995 cartoon from Universal and Amblin Entertainment starring Kevin Bacon, Bob Hoskins, and Phil Collins (in a weirdly non-singing role) about a half-wolf-half-husky who just wants to be a sled dog but he’s an outcast but then there’s a diphtheria outbreak that’s killing all the kids in the tiny town of Nome and it’s so isolated and stormy there’s no possible way to get the diphtheria medicine to the kids except by dogsled AND BALTO LEADS THE PACK BECAUSE OF HIS WOLF-SENSES AND EARNS THE RESPECT OF THE DOGS AND SAVES THE CHILDREN AND BECOMES A HERO??? AND IT’S BASED ON A TRUE STORY????? 

You should watch it!  🙂

And THEN you should watch the Iditarod Race, the famous dog sled race which runs the same path as the 1925 Serum Run from Anchorage to Nome. It begins in March and takes about two weeks, and if I ever go back to Alaska (I hope so!), it will be to watch the Iditarod. A statue of Balto marks the starting line of the race.

Now, the real Balto was not half-wolf. He was a Malamute-Siberian husky mix, and he was one of many dogs on many sled teams that helped relay the diphtheria medicine from Anchorage to Nenana to Nome. Actually, the dog that did the most work, who covered the greatest distance in the most dangerous part of the run, was a Siberian Husky named Togo. Togo is pretty much left out of the story of The Great Race of Mercy aka The 1925 Serum Run, but don’t worry, his legacy carries on: Leonhard Seppala, the musher who owned Togo, introduced the Siberian husky to the Lower 48. If you own a purebred Siberian husky, chances are likely that the noble Togo is one of its ancestors.

In 2019, Disney made a movie about Togo starring Willem Dafoe as Leonhard Seppala. They needed real-deal sled dogs and an expert musher to be Willem Dafoe’s stunt double. Enter Martin Buser, four-time Iditarod champion. This guy has been racing since the 80s and places in the top ten pretty much every time. Martin Buser’s Kennel, Happy Trails, is about an hour and a half from Anchorage and was (obviously) one of the first places we visited. Tours are given by veteran mushers training for the Iditarod. Again, you should go in February–the Iditarod will be in a few weeks, so the mushers and the dogs are geared up! You’ll see a short film about Martin Buber’s career, Togo, mushing, etc., while the tour guides prepare the biggest and most ludicrous of snow suits for you to wear. (You want to be nice and warm out there, and your regular clothes will get splattered in mud and dog poop on the run.) Then you’ll get a tour of the kennel and meet the dogs, and then the mushers will take you on their practice run. You can be a Passenger Princess like me, but they’ll also let you drive the sled at certain points.

Any of y’all have huskies? You know how they’ll eat up your whole couch and wake up the whole neighborhood at 4 AM with howling? That’s because these dogs were meant to pull these sleds. They are overflowing with energy, and when they get that harness on, and get out into an open field, they’re like

           WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO    

It’s exhilarating. 

Seward

We didn’t spend that much time in Anchorage. It’s a big city, mostly concrete buildings to withstand the harsh winters. You can see Denali, formerly Mount McKinley, from Anchorage (and Denali is 133 miles away!) but there’s not a whole lot to do within the city. I don’t mean that as a criticism, I just mean that in Alaska, a lot of the people who live up there (who aren’t military) are just salt of the earth people living out a quiet life in awe-inspiring but unforgiving terrain. Idk the best way I can describe Anchorage is it’s kind of like Mos Eisley in Tatooine. Like yeah it’s kind of a dumpy city, but what do you expect? It’s a port city on a remote planet in the far corner of the galaxy, and if you want to see the beautiful double-sun and the dunes of Luke’s ranch, you have to drive out into the boonies. By making our home base Anchorage, each day gave us enough sunlight for a good day-trip. 

In 1867, during the beginning of the Wild West era, U.S. Secretary of the State William H. Seward bought Alaska from Russia. (It officially became a state in 1959, but locals say Alaska was pretty much like the Wild West up until the late 60s.) A lot of people made fun of Secretary Seward for what they considered to be a waste of money, calling Alaska “Walrussia” (okay that one did make me lol) and “Seward’s Folly.” To honor Secretary Seward, an eponymous town was built two and a half hours away from Anchorage at the mouth of the Kenai Fjords. 

Seward is an outdoor lover’s paradise. This place is PACKED in the summer with people kayaking the glacial fjords. The hiking is unreal, the fishing is great because salmon migrate there to spawn, and the Alaska SeaLife Center rehabilitates marine mammals. You can see plenty of sea otters around the harbor because fishermen will feed them leftover chum.

Seward is a summertime town. Most of the stores were closed when we visited in February, but there was a coffee shop open where we warmed up and enjoyed the views. The drive from Anchorage to Seward was worth the trip alone, as we drove on an easy highway past towering snow-covered mountains and glass-still lakes.

Matanuska Glacier

The drive to Matanuska Glacier is even more sublime, and slightly shorter at two hours. (I don’t want you to read this and think “ugh so much driving” because Alaska is one of those places, like Switzerland and Scotland, where the best part of the vacation comes from the journey through the dramatic landscape.) There are a couple different places where you can access the glacier (remember that a glacier is a frozen, flowing river) but I would recommend Glacier Tours. They’ll take you out in a motorized cart to the mouth of the glacier, and you’ll get ice pick straps for your shoes so you don’t slip on the ice. You’ll be crawling all up in that glacier, getting unreal pics and becoming the absolute envy of all your friends and family. Just remember that the glacier changes every year, so don’t go to Glacier Tours like “where’s the ice arch from my girl Reba’s blog?” because it melted, henney. But something even cooler will be in its place! And the ice really is that blue. You’ll see bright turquoise, baby blue, slate blue-gray, and emerald-teal.

Alyeska

I’ve been skiing ever since I was five years old. I know that sounds like “and then the whole bus clapped” but it’s true: one of my earliest memories is of my dad, an avid skier, strapping me onto his skis when I was five and holding me tight as I went shrieking gleefully down the slopes. I took ski lessons when I was little because my parents wanted me and my sister to hold our own whenever we happened to be stationed in a snowy area. I’ve skied in California, Virginia, Tennessee, all over the Alps, South Korea, Poland, and Alaska.

SKIING IN ALASKA IS TERRIFYING.

I have never been so scared on a ski run in MY LIFE like I was at Alyeska Ski Resort. How do I describe the pee-inducing terror of skiing down the Chugach Mountains? Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? Have you ever peered over the edge of the rim and felt dizzy, contemplating how much of a pulpy, gelatinous mess your body would turn into if you slipped and fell down the 4,000-foot drop to your splattering, agonizing death? NOW IMAGINE YOU’RE SKIING DOWN IT. The slopes are steep, narrow and twisting, and (oh my god my stomach is churning just remembering this) there’s no bumpers or little orange netting to catch you as you ski along the cliffside, so the whole time you’re like “oh geez oh lord too fast too fast no room to zigzag oh geez OH NO THAT’S A CLIFF”. I don’t care if you’re an atheist, you will be PRAYING for your life every minute you’re skiing at Alyeska Resort.

Would I go back and do it again?

Absolutely.

WHERE I ATE

Look, uh… I’m just gonna shoot you straight. Anchorage isn’t a culinary capital. I know, I feel bad, and I also know all my military friends who were stationed in Alaska are like “HOW DARE YOU WE HAVE SALMON” but that’s kind of my point. The salmon is great, but… not much else to recommend here that you can’t get in the Lower 48. I went up there expecting to eat, like, moose steak and reindeer heart and BBQ grizzly bear ribs, or something, and they do have moose and reindeer, but it will be of the ground or cured meat variety. Which makes sense, I mean a culture that has such an unforgiving winter would obviously rely on curing and preserving meats. But I didn’t eat anything in Alaska that was like, mind-blowingly good and I couldn’t get it anywhere in the states. 

Other than this ice cream shop.

Wild Scoops Creamery: I don’t think the ice cream scoopers appreciated this compliment the way I meant it, but this is the third-best ice cream I’ve ever had in my whole life. (The first is homemade lavender honey ice cream I had when I was ten at a dinner party at my house right before 9/11, it’s a symbolic ice cream really. The second is a tie between Dole Whip at the Dole Pineapple Plantation in Oahu and limoncello gelato in Amalfi served in a carved-out Amalfi lemon, so really Wild Scoops is the fourth, but we’ll just say it’s #3.) The flavors are weird, but I like weird flavors, and even if you don’t, it’s still really good. They have quirky flavors like lingonberry-juniper-bergamot for the adventurous eaters like me, but if you’re more of a “I just want a cheeseburger” type like Alex, they have classics like chunky monkey and peanut butter.

Simon & Seafort’s: We ate here for Valentine’s Day. A lot of highly-recommended restaurants in downtown Anchorage are in office buildings or business parks. Simon & Seafort’s is one of them, but it’s a nice restaurant with a beautiful view of the fjord.

Glacier BrewHouse: Another nice restaurant weirdly in a business park. The inside is beautiful: with large fireplaces and vaulted ceilings with wooden beams, it looks like an Alaskan chalet. This is purportedly the best place to get salmon in Anchorage. All the seafood is local. The food was good, but I didn’t find the service to be quite friendly, but I think that’s the Alaskan-salt-of-the-earth way.

Moose’s Tooth: This is the best place to get a pizza. As you can see from the menu, Moose’s Tooth is great if you’re a lover of meat-heavy pizzas. I’m not, personally, but… man I am not doing a good job of hyping these restaurants up. I promise the food is good, we liked the food.

Humpys: With a name like Humpy’s, you’ve got to go, right? Humpy’s is on the list of “best local seafood” “best local ingredients” etc. but be warned: it’s not exactly in the same range as Simon & Seaforts and Glacier BrewHouse. It’s a pub, so you’re getting pub food. I would recommend the crab nuggets (crab cakes in hushpuppy form) and the reindeer cheeseburger (tastes like a regular burger). Good bar food.

For breakfast, I would recommend Kava’s Pancake House and Snow City Cafe. Kava’s is in outer Anchorage, but it’s worth it because the Hawaiian-style pancakes were yummy, and this is by far the friendliest service we got on our vacation. I specifically remember how cheery the staff was; they might as well have been from Alabama. Snow City is downtown, very cute, and open early. (Since the sun doesn’t rise until 10:00 am, many places won’t open until 9:00.)

For a drink (actually, dinner too, go here instead of Humpy’s), I would recommend 49th State Brewing. They have a smoky märzen (my favorite beer) called Smōk that was so, so delicious. The interior is nice, too. I think just about any “best beer/bar in Anchorage” blog post or article will point you to 49th State first, but you should also check out Midnight Sun Brewing Co. Midnight Sun features more IPAs and lagers, but has a nice selection for all tastes.

HOW I PACKED

LAYERS.

If you’re going to do any of the outdoor activities in the Alaskan wilderness in the winter (that would be dogsledding, skiing, or exploring the Matanuska Glacier), you need to be simultaneously wearing:

• A turtleneck
• A warm wool sweater
• A legit puffer coat
• A scarf and gloves
• Leggings or long johns
• Fleece-lined jeggings or insulated jeans
• A warm hat
• Thick wool socks
• Snow boots
• Add a ski jacket and ski pants if skiing

Lol you think I’m being dramatic??? Go ahead and just take off ONE of those layers at Alyeska and see how quickly you turn into Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

Now, if you’re exploring Anchorage or Seward, you won’t need so many layers. A good sweater, puffer coat, hat, and fleece-lined leggings with snow boots will do.

Speaking of what to pack, make sure to leave room for souvenirs. Most of the Alaska souvenirs will be along 4th St., where the Iditarod starts, and the souvenir shops are pretty high-quality. Among the plethora of tiny wooden moose, magnets, scarves and another Alaska-themed accoutrements that I purchased on the trip, my best socks, sweatshirt, and long-sleeve tee came from Trapper Jack’s Trading Post.