To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.
- John Muir
This seems like an innocuous statement, until you actually visit Alaska and experience it for yourself. I consider myself fortunate to have gotten time, resources and company to visit Alaska or the last frontier, so it is referred.
When you think of Alaska, you think of snow and probably lot of it, igloos, native american tribes, auroras, grizzlies, whales, bush-planes, elks, hunting - basically everything a remote icy cold land could be like. What you don't realize (until you actually are there) is the diversity and range of adventures this land offers!
When we (me and my friends) started Alaska trip planning, we spent lot of time trying to cover as much land as possible and do as many things as humanly possible while doing that. As naive as we were, we quickly realized that Alaska is unlike rest of the mainland US states, wherein it is practical to drive from one end of the state to another in a day (Maybe Texas, Arizona, NM are exceptions or maybe not!). The relative lack of generous road connectivity and humongous land mass of the state makes it impossible to cover the whole state over four wheels! Roughly there are three parts of Alaska (there are ? ideally, but these three stand out for somebody visiting Alaska for the first time).
1. Arctic circle and Fairbanks region way up north!
2. Glacier bay national park, Juneau, Alaskan marine highway, Kodiak down south-west!
3. Denali national park, Anchorage, Kenai peninsula, Chugach national forest and Prince William Sound covering most of the central-western region.
We decided to focus on the third part as it offers great diversity within relatively short driving distance (1200+ driving miles i.e.!).
First stop, Denali national park! My first introduction to Denali was through Netlflix documentaries about crazy snowboarders sliding down through deep and pristine snow-filled crevices of the Denali mountain range while landing on to them through helicopters in the movie - Art of Flight. As awe-inspiring the movie was, the landscape was enough to fall in love at first sight. Then I read a bit about different part of the park and realized that the park is so big that there are three different ecosystems living in place neighboring each other. The jungles, the meadows and the mountains!
To be continued..
This seems like an innocuous statement, until you actually visit Alaska and experience it for yourself. I consider myself fortunate to have gotten time, resources and company to visit Alaska or the last frontier, so it is referred.
When you think of Alaska, you think of snow and probably lot of it, igloos, native american tribes, auroras, grizzlies, whales, bush-planes, elks, hunting - basically everything a remote icy cold land could be like. What you don't realize (until you actually are there) is the diversity and range of adventures this land offers!
When we (me and my friends) started Alaska trip planning, we spent lot of time trying to cover as much land as possible and do as many things as humanly possible while doing that. As naive as we were, we quickly realized that Alaska is unlike rest of the mainland US states, wherein it is practical to drive from one end of the state to another in a day (Maybe Texas, Arizona, NM are exceptions or maybe not!). The relative lack of generous road connectivity and humongous land mass of the state makes it impossible to cover the whole state over four wheels! Roughly there are three parts of Alaska (there are ? ideally, but these three stand out for somebody visiting Alaska for the first time).
1. Arctic circle and Fairbanks region way up north!
2. Glacier bay national park, Juneau, Alaskan marine highway, Kodiak down south-west!
3. Denali national park, Anchorage, Kenai peninsula, Chugach national forest and Prince William Sound covering most of the central-western region.
We decided to focus on the third part as it offers great diversity within relatively short driving distance (1200+ driving miles i.e.!).
First stop, Denali national park! My first introduction to Denali was through Netlflix documentaries about crazy snowboarders sliding down through deep and pristine snow-filled crevices of the Denali mountain range while landing on to them through helicopters in the movie - Art of Flight. As awe-inspiring the movie was, the landscape was enough to fall in love at first sight. Then I read a bit about different part of the park and realized that the park is so big that there are three different ecosystems living in place neighboring each other. The jungles, the meadows and the mountains!
To be continued..
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