Interior Alaska

A view from the Denali Highway.

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We spent our second night on the Denali Highway camped east of the Tangle Lakes at the edge of a large gravel pull-out. The view north across rolling tundra to the Alaska Range and southeast to the Wrangell Mountains was spectacular, and we enjoyed dinner as the sun set, watching the light change on the peaks. But just after going to bed, we heard human footsteps crunching in the gravel, approaching our unlocked van. Immediately alert, we sat up and peered into the darkness. The footsteps passed close and receded. I locked the van from the inside and moved bear spray from my daypack to a bin beside the bed, more worried about humans than bears. 

Ten minutes later a truck entered the pullout and unloaded several loud guys just far enough away that we couldn’t hear their conversation. They left and then showed up again at the far end of the pullout, piling out of their truck and milling around noisily. There was more loud discussion and more driving around. We contemplated fleeing to another camp spot, but neither of us felt like packing up and driving.

Slowly, it dawned on us that these were moose hunters looking for an overdue buddy, presumably wandering the tundra in the dark trying to find the road. A couple of days earlier, one of the few moose we’d seen in Alaska was splayed beside the highway being converted from an impressive herbivore into someone’s winter meat supply. We knew it was the start of moose season when the ruckus began but, in the unexpected anxiety of darkness and half-sleep, hadn’t put two and two together. Eventually we managed to relax and sleep before continuing to Paxson and Delta Junction the next morning.

It’s presumptuous to title a post “Interior Alaska” after driving tiny corridors through the ten or so percent of the interior that even has roads. North and east of where we traveled is the other ninety percent, a vast landscape, much of it wilderness, that I know little about. To access that deeper interior requires bush pilots, canoes, bushwacking, bear spray, and a lot of time. We had bear spray but otherwise were unprepared, so instead we visited Denali National Park, spent a few days driving the Denali Highway, and returned to the Yukon on the Top-of-the-World Highway that connects Tok to the tiny mining town of Chicken before continuing through a remote U.S.-Canadian border station west of Dawson City. 

We nailed the timing except for camping during moose season. Our route traversed a vast mountainous landscape in full fall color with almost none of the mosquitoes that Alaska is infamous for. It only frosted once or twice, though it rained often, and despite it being berry season, we never encountered grizzly bears, though we looked for them eagerly from the safety of the van and nervously while we hiked. We ate huge cinnamon rolls at Chicken just before the Chicken Creek Cafe closed for the season, and we walked through bright yellow aspens to a river where Klondike miners had toiled to dredge up gold over a hundred years ago when the Alaska outback was utterly different than it is now. The only thing we missed was wildlife, seeing almost none the whole time we were in Alaska. Moose and caribou know better than to stand beside the road in September looking like impressive trophies with their enormous racks glinting in the sun. 

This is as close as we got to a moose while in Alaska--an old skull and rack in Denali National Park.

A local denizen in Talkeetna where we stopped to walk around in the rain. In the background is the office of Talkeetna Air Taxi, the famous flying service that has shuttled climbers in and out of the Alaska Range for more than half a century.

Baked goodies at the Talkeetna Roadhouse.

Ellen hiking in the mist on the Healy Ridge, Denali National Park.

Healy Ridge, Denali National Park.

The foggy crest of Healy Ridge.

A drainage in autumn tundra near the west end of the Denali Highway.

An appealing cabin on the Denali Highway.

The Denali Highway, mostly gravel, was the route used to access Denali National Park before the Parks Highway was built. It traverses a gorgeous tundra landscape and parallels the Alaska Range.

Wood plank bridge over the Susitna River on the Denali Highway.

One of hundreds of small lakes along the Denali Highway. 

Ellen hiking from the MacLaren Summit with our friend Terry. We met Terry and her husband, Bruce, in a laundromat at Denali National Park and ran into them again on the Denali Highway. From there we leapfrogged each other all the way to the ferry at Haines. 

Patterned ground beside a tarn along our hike on the MacLaren Summit.

Lenticular clouds over the Alaska Range. I looked at the forecast for the Denali summit one day while we were in the area: 90-100 mph winds with subzero temperatures and three feet of snow. Not a great time of year for Alaskan mountaineering.

The infamous Alaska Pipeline south of Delta Junction. The pipeline carries oil from the North Slope to Valdez.

Northern lights near Chicken, Alaska. 

The Top-of-the-World Highway crosses rolling mountain ranges from Tok, Alaska to the Yukon border.

Ellen ordering cinnamon rolls at the Chicken Creek Cafe in Chicken, Alaska. Supposedly, miners wanted to name the town "Ptarmigan", but couldn't spell it, so they settled for "Chicken". These cinnamon rolls were huge and delicious.

A floating dredge viewed from a bluff above the Mosquito Fork of the Fortymile River near Chicken. These huge contraptions were used to extract gold from rivers during the gold rush.

Alaska's Southeast Coast

The view from Valdez, Alaska, the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline, with oil tankers waiting to be filled.

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When we were in Alaska this fall (2025), we dabbled with the coast, spending a few days in Valdez, Anchorage, and Seward early, and then Haines at the end of our trip before taking the Alaska Ferry south past Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan. The ferry stopped just long enough at Sitka and Ketchikan for us to stretch our legs (and wallets) for an hour or so. We barely touched Alaska’s 6,640 miles of coastline, and we didn’t stay anywhere long enough for more than a superficial glimpse of life in the small coastal towns. But from the perspective of someone coming from the arid Southwest, to live on Alaska’s southeast coast, you must be hardy, oblivious to rain, and tolerant of cruise ships disgorging so many passengers that they sometimes equal or outnumber the residents of the towns where they stop.

Maybe thanks to the weather, the southeast coast is gorgeous. Mountains march to the edge of the sea, and massive tidal glaciers flow into the ocean. Deep conifer forests crowd rocky shorelines where sea lions lounge. Braided rivers bring glacial silt to the fiords, and bears pluck salmon from the water, tearing off the choice meat before abandoning one and grabbing another. Fishing boats of all sizes, laden with the complicated tangle of nets and floats and ropes and booms needed to make a living catching salmon, cod, and halibut, are packed along piers in the harbors. In the evenings, fishermen lug twelve-packs of cheap beer to their boats to share with their mates. On shore, restaurants serve fish and chips, souvenir stores offer everything from t-shirts to Russian tchotskies, and groceries stock Dramamine in racks beside the check-out line. 

And it rains and rains. Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, gets five to six feet of rain and eighty inches of snow in an average year. Farther south, Ketchikan, the “Rain Capital of Alaska,” gets thirteen feet of rain a year, the majority during the long dark winter. And if you live there, you can’t just drive to a sunnier place. Most of these towns are not accessible by road. Instead, residents must float or fly to escape. I don’t think I could manage, even with solace of the scenery. 

The day before we left Haines, I met a woman who had moved there two years before from Wilson, Wyoming, where I lived in the 1980s. In fact, she'd lived for decades just up the road from me there, though I don’t think we’d met. When I asked her why she’d moved to Haines, she lamented that, “It’s getting too hot in Jackson in the summer.” I don’t think of Wyoming as being a hot spot, but slow-motion climate migration is happening, and maybe cool and rainy beats hot and dry in the long run. 

Not surprisingly, it was stormy during our trip through the Inside Passage until we left Alaska and re-entered Canada, where the skies finally cleared. Until then, we mostly stayed inside, reading, eating, and scanning the shore through rain-streaked windows for bald eagles or the ocean for whales and orcas. On arrival in Bellingham, the Pacific Northwest, usually a rainy respite from the desert for us, was dry and sunny.

The Lowe River just before entering the Prince William Sound at Valdez on a typically cloudy day.

A fishing boat in the harbor at Valdez.

Complex (to me) piles of gear on fishing boats in Valdez Harbor.

Fireweed along the shore at Valdez.

The Columbia Glacier in retreat from Columbia Bay. We took a boat tour from Valdez to see the glacier.

Ice in Columbia Bay.

Thompson Lake, where we camped just outside of Valdez on our way to Anchorage.

Robin Moore and Ellen descending from Near Point in the Chugach Front Range back into Anchorage.

Seward, Alaska, on the Kenai Peninsula, where we spent a few rainy days.

The view of Resurrection Bay from the Lost Lake Trail above Seward. We enjoyed a rare clear day while on an overnight backpack to Lost Lake but hiked out as the next storm gathered.

Coastal mountains east of Seward viewed from the Lost Lake Trail on our hike out.

Ellen hiking towards Seward from Lost Lake.

The Bamboo Room in Haines. I imagine that bars are popular places during the long dark coastal winters. We had lunch in the adjoining restaurant, owned by the same family for generations. 

Raingear at the ready on a fishing boat in the Haines harbor.

The harbormaster's house above the Haines Harbor.

We missed the peak grizzly bear feed along the Chilcoot River at Haines, but this mother and her four cubs entertained us while we camped at a state park just upstream from here.

The view from inside the Alaska Ferry. I think the poor guy in the yellow jacket was faced with standing in the rain and wind to watch for floating logs as the boat traversed a relatively narrow passage.

A totem pole in Ketchikan.

Our friends, Terry and Bruce, and Ellen, on our last day on the ferry after it finally emerged from the clouds near Vancouver Island.

 

Photographing Tundra

 

Tundra plants, lichen, and blueberries along the Denali Highway in Alaska.

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My first trip to Alaska was for a short meeting in Fairbanks in September 2003, but I flew in a couple of days early, rented a car, and drove a big loop that included the Denali Highway, fascinated by my first glimpses of Alaska. It was autumn, and the tundra was spectacularly colorful, bugs were gone, and the weather was warm and sunny. Hunters gutted enormous moose beside the highway. I’ve wanted to return ever since, and this year’s seven-week autumn trip was the realization of that dream but without quite so much sunshine. 

We encountered tundra in Denali National Park, along the Denali Highway, in Tombstone Territorial Park in the Yukon, along the road to Haines, and on hikes into the alpine. I could have spent more time than I did wandering in tiny circles looking down at tundra, exquisite up close and grandly beautiful where it swept across northern landscapes. Even though we covered a lot of ground and were awed by the vast expanses, the close-up photos of tundra are my favorites from the trip, so I’ll share a few here starting with two from my first visit to Alaska in 2003.  

A wolverine skull embedded in tundra that I found during my short visit to Alaska in 2003. This photo was taken with an old film camera, and the contrast between dark moss and the bright white skull was a little too much for the film, but it was an amazing random find on a short walk from my rental car.

One more tundra photo from 2003. This is in Denali National Park.

Healy Ridge in Denali National Park on a rainy hike during our recent trip in 2025. 

Tundra along the Denali Highway.

Ellen identifying tundra plants along the Denali Highway. 

There are lots of mushrooms in the tundra. This is another detail near the Denali Highway.

Tundra detail.

Blueberries were everywhere in the tundra. We picked these on a hike up a peak called Near Point in the Chugach Front Range above Anchorage.

Scheuchzer's Cotton Grass along the Denali Highway.

Willow tundra on a bluff above the Denali Highway.

Lichen along the North Klondike Trail in Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory, Canada.

Lichen and a woody shrub, North Klondike Trail, in the Yukon.

Lichen and fall leaves, North Klondike Trail, Tombstone Park.

Boulder with tundra vegetation. North Klondike Trail, Tombstone Park, in the Yukon.

Golden willows (probably) in Tombstone Territorial Park.

Our last view of tundra in the Yukon along the road to Haines, Alaska, where we boarded the Alaska Ferry.