Alaska. The land of the midnight sun. There’s something about this destination that always draws me back and I’m not even 100% sure why. I know one reason is because we visited in the winter so of course we had to come back for the summer, and the other reason was to tick off a huge bucket list item….
Exploring Anchorage, it had a completely different feel to when we visited in winter. We explored downtown, reminiscing on the times that we were walking on ice-covered paths opposed to the actual footpaths we walked now. We had a few nights stopover before heading to Canada so we booked up the 4 days we had in Alaska. Day one was spent exploring Anchorage & bike riding the 19km Tony Knowles Coastal Trail on the search for moose.
Another was spent fly fishing out of Willow with FishHound Expeditions, floating down the Susitna River catching king, silver, chum, red and pink salmon, as well as rainbow trout. Our fishing guide nicknamed the pink salmon ‘Mr Pink’ and it’s all we heard for the day as we caught one after another. We jumped in waders that they provided and floated down in a raft, hopping out at certain opportunities so we could fly fish amongst it. We stopped to cook lunch on the side of the bank, thinking for sure that we would see a wild bear but none in sight.
Our last day was spent driving south on the Seward highway towards Portage, stopping in at the sights along the way including Beluga Point, Bird Point scenic lookout, Turnagain Arm lookout and the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Park before turning down Portage Glacier road to check out Tangle Pond, Portage Lake and views of the Portage Glacier.
Of course I saved the best until last. Day two, we finally ticked off the biggest item on my bucket list – watching bears catch salmon at Brooks Falls. Seeing baby bears was a bonus and it was hands down the best place we have ever had! Especially for how close we were to these huge and extremely wild grizzly bears. Check out the next blog post to read all about the bears at Brooks Falls.
ONLY HAPPY WHEN I TRAVEL 