Trip 23: Alaska Part 2: Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic National Parks

For our second summer in a row, we spent close to 2 weeks in Alaska visiting national parks. While last year we rented a car and drove around the state, this year we mainly traveled by air (including several bush planes) to reach our destinations, as none of these national parks can be reached by road. We started in Juneau, then stayed in Glacier Bay National Park for 2 nights, then went to Anchorage to take a day flight to Lake Clark National Park, then flew to Fairbanks to take a further flight north of the Arctic Circle to the small town of Bettles for 2 nights, where we were able to take a flight-seeing tour of Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic National Parks.

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Glacier Bay National Park can be reached by boat or, as we did, by a 25-minute flight from Juneau to Gustavus. The national park lodge provides a shuttle service from the small airport to the visitor center and lodge area. We stayed at the lodge for 2 nights, giving us plenty of time for some short hikes and for a day-long boat excursion in Glacier Bay, which culminates at a stop at the Johns Hopkins tidewater glacier, 63 nautical miles from the lodge area. The excursion provided opportunities to see whales, sea otters, sea lions, puffins, and even bear along the shoreline. On our hikes, we saw moose (there are two juvenile moose in the 2nd picture above), sea otters, and harbor seals. In the evening, we also saw (from the safety of our lodge room window) a brown bear foraging about 10 feet away.

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For our second national park on this trip, we took a small float plane from Anchorage to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Our plane landed in the Twin Lakes area near the Proenneke cabin. Dick Proenneke was a naturalist who hand-built the cabin and then lived there off the land for 30 years. His meticulous notes and video recordings of his time there became the basis for the book "One Man's Wilderness." While we did not know anything about Dick Proenneke prior to our trip, seeing what he was able to build and hearing how he lived was fascinating. In addition, the views from the plane were amazing. Besides seeing many glaciers, we flew over Blockade Lake, a glacial lake filled with large icebergs that had calved off of Blockade glacier. From the air, we also spotted moose, bears, and even saw beluga whales near the mouths of several rivers that run into the Cook Inlet.

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Our next national park stop was Kobuk Valley National Park. For this (and Gates of the Arctic) we took an all-day flight seeing trip on a float plane from the small town of Bettles, Alaska, that allowed us to see vast areas of Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic from the air and for a short period on the ground. As the name implies, this park mainly consists of a broad wetlands valley at the southern end of the Brooks mountain range. An interest feature of the park are the sand dunes that cover about 20,000 acres. Our brief stop on this part of the tour was in the Kobuk River itself.

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As we continued our flightseeing tour, we headed to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, which is the second largest of all US national parks at around 7.5 million acres, but is the least visited of all the parks because of its remoteness. The park is centered on the Brooks mountain range and we flew through several mountain passes. Our landing site for this part of the tour was Walker Lake, the largest mountain lake in the park. After a picnic lunch and a little fishing, we headed back to the small town of Bettles, then on to Fairbanks to head home. Given that there are no roads or trails in these two vast parks, we thought the flightseeing trip was a great way to get to see them.

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As for brew pubs, Alaska does not lack for good craft beers! In Juneau, we visited Alaskan Brewing Co. (their amber ale is one of my favorites!), Harbor Mountain Brewing Co., Devil's Club Brewing Company, and Forbidden Peak Brewery. In Anchorage, we returned to 49th State Brewing. (The Tiger's Blood sour ale there is delicious!) In Fairbanks, we made it to Lat 65 Brewing Company and Humble Roots Beer Project. Humble Roots has a wheat beer called "Bananas" that tastes just like (duh!) bananas!! It sounds odd for a beer, but it really worked well!!