Three Perfect Days: A Trip to Alaska

I’m an hour outside of Anchorage, just after dawn, on a road squeezed between steep, forested slopes and a vast natural bay. The mountains ahead are entombed in gray clouds. A sign informs me that the next gas station is 85 miles away.

My first impression of Alaska in daylight is that it is not to be messed with. I’ve done my homework, so I know that the body of water to my right is the Turnagain Arm, a branch of Cook Inlet that confounded early British explorers. The tides here are some of the world’s highest, and I’ve read about tourists getting stranded in the quicksand-like mud flats. Most of these stories end horribly, so when I see cars ahead of us parked on the roadside, I worry that they’ve stopped to witness an unfolding disaster. Instead, it turns out they’re watching belugas. The small whales are swimming parallel to the road, creating slim wakes, their white backs rolling, bringing a burst of life to the grimly impressive surroundings. I pull over for a better look.

By the end of the trip, I will have become well acquainted with this turn-on-a-dime feeling —those moments when Alaska goes from menacing to marvelous in a heartbeat. It happens often on the Kenai Peninsula, the wild backyard of Alaska’s largest city. Whereas much of the state is best seen by cruise ships or bush planes, this Vermont-size landmass is relatively car-friendly, so it appeals to both Anchorage residents and self-directed travelers like me.

Continuing down the road, I reach the port town of Seward, on the peninsula’s east coast. My early start has left me in need of a caffeine top-up, which I get along with a buttery strawberry jam scone at Resurrect Art Coffee House. Morning light streams in through arched windows — the building is a converted Methodist church — and there’s a soapstone stove and an upstairs nook with a chessboard. If you had a sit-down kind of day ahead of you, this would be the perfect place to spend it.

I’ve got plans to visit Kenai Fjords National Park, however, so I drive down the street to local outfitter Liquid Adventures. From the company’s office, I’m shuttled by minibus to a waiting catamaran. Rain starts to fall as our small tour group motors out from the boat-filled harbor and into four-foot seas, but by the time we enter the park’s calmer fjords and launch our kayaks, the sun is shining on the majestic surroundings. To our left is a 2,500-foot wall of rock crowned with Styrofoam-ish glacial ice. To our right is a shorter rock wall streaked with iron red. Straight ahead is the main event, a tidewater glacier that’s sloping down into the sea and calving noisily.

The rumbling of the glacier is an ancient, awesome sound, one that we hear seconds after some great section of ice has fallen off. At one point, a whole arch collapses, making the sea heave and leaving a scooped-out cavity in the front of the ice. During the boat ride back, I’m buzzing with a new awareness of geological forces, climate change, and earthly beauty. Even our guides seem a bit stunned. “I’ve never seen it that active,” one says.

I return to Seward just in time to catch the last feeding session at the Alaska SeaLife Center, an aquarium and marine research facility. I watch from just feet away as a Steller sea lion named Pilot drags his sausage-like body onto a rock, eagerly chomps down on thrown herrings and gurgles for more.

Next, in the aviary, I watch through a plexiglass barrier as horned puffins swim for their supper. They’re basically flying underwater, leaving trails of bubbles and stuffing piles of small fish into their beaks. Also known as “parrots of the sea,” puffins are as tough as they are cute. They spend most of their lives out on the open ocean, in places so remote that scientists have a hard time studying them. There are certain animal behaviors that even the nature lovers among us will only ever witness in captivity. Surely puffins doing their underwater grab-and-go is one of them.

I’m ready to stuff my own beak after this long first day, so I head to The Flamingo Lounge a few blocks away. With its gold ceilings, red Chesterfield chairs, repurposed church pews and hundreds of novelty bourbon decanters lining the walls, The Flamingo looks more like a louche hipster bar than a restaurant. Yet the five-person kitchen dishes out top-notch fare, including local specialties such as fried halibut and snow crab.

I’m met by owners Matthew and KellyAnn Cope, who moved to Seward from Southern California in 2017 after failing to find what they were looking for in trendier towns farther down the coast. “This is something we’d be trying to open if we still lived in San Diego,” Matt explains as my first drink arrives. It’s a lush, mint-green blend of vanilla, coconut and lemongrass flavors — “a piña colada’s fourth cousin” — as our bartender puts it. It’s way more delicious than I would have expected for somewhere this far off the beaten path. The same goes for the second round, a variation on a margarita featuring housemade carrot juice and habanero pepper. Warming to the alternative steak house vibe, I devour a French dip sandwich. The meat is tender, the broth herby and my hunger eradicated.

My last stop of the day is Salted Roots, a cluster of 12 rental cottages that the Copes own and manage 10 minutes outside of town. They traveled around Alaska before settling here, and KellyAnn says that they saw more than enough taxidermy and bear-and-moose quilts. “We wanted to cater to the next generation, to create a more modern place to stay,” she explains while showing me into a soaring A-frame. Indeed, the decor is light and airy. There’s a communal barrel sauna, picnic tables made from recycled ocean plastic and (most fun of all) a cedar-clad 1974 passenger bus that’s been converted into a bedroom.

Despite these lovely environs, I find myself unable to sleep. I’m too excited about seeing bears tomorrow.

There’s only one way to drive into Homer — past the Baycrest Overlook just north of town. Upon reaching the vista point, I get out of the car to take in the ocean-like grandeur of Kachemak Bay. As I do so, the end-of-the-road feeling of this unusual hippie-and-halibut outpost (population: 6,000) begins to register.

I was up blisteringly early to make the three-hour drive to Homer Airport, so I left myself enough time to make a stop at The Bagel Shop, where the chewy rolls rival New York’s finest. Judging from the dozens of regulars lining up in their Xtratuf gumboots, I’d guess this is not news. But while most of the locals are starting another workday, I’m about to embark on a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Midmorning finds me sharing a five-seat Cessna with a retired English couple and pilot/guide Zack Tappan of Sasquatch Alaska Adventure Co. I’m lucky to be on board: Thanks to a break in the windy weather and Mandy Dixon, the well-connected owner of the lodge I’m set to stay at this evening, I managed to secure a last-minute booking. After an hour of flying amid sparse clouds, Tappan lands the plane on a sloping beach in Katmai National Park & Preserve. His attitude is so casual, his safety briefing so efficient, that you could be mistaken for thinking we’re going mushroom foraging. Instead, upon walking over a sandy berm, we find ourselves within easy mauling range of a trio of brown bears.

These bears are too busy fishing for salmon to care about, much less charge, us. Watching the 900-pound bruisers at work is riveting. Their furry flanks shudder as they thrash through the shallows, pin down racing fish, and close their jaws around them with awful cracking sounds. Scavenging seagulls shriek all around us, as does a small voice inside me. Tappan, meanwhile, stretches out on the ground with his elbows behind his head like a guy in a lounge chair on game day. “They’re fat and happy, so they’re really easy-going this time of year, both with humans and with each other,” he explains. We see brown, lumpy bodies scattered across the distance, snoozing in holes that they’ve dug deep enough to accommodate their bulging bellies.

Walking around, we look into some of the dens, come across fresh pawprints the size of dinner plates, and pass a dozen or so active bears.

I had assumed that our guide would tote a firearm and shepherd us onto a crowded viewing platform, but this experience is both private — we see just one other small group in two hours — and thrillingly uncontained. The videos that I send my friends when I’m back in cell range make their jaws drop.

After Tappan deposits me back at Homer Airport, I dip into the town’s eclectic art scene. My first stop is Bunnell Street Arts Center, a former trading post with a pile of colorful buoys spilling off its front porch. Asia Freeman, an artist and a cofounder of the center, grew up here in the 1970s and ’80s and returned after years of traveling internationally.

“You can’t look at this view and not be inspired,” she says. “So, as an ethos, the art here is very place-based.” The nonprofit displays and sells art, hosts residencies and fundraises for public works such as Tuyanitun: Tuggeht, a beacon-like sculpture by Ninilchik artist Argent Kvasnikoff that serves as a form of tribal land acknowledgment on nearby Bishop’s Beach.

Next, I drive up a lush hillside just outside of town to Dean Family Farm and Art Studios. Jeffrey and Ranja Dean, along with their grown daughter, M’fanwy, make and sell art here, but the family’s rambling property is arguably the bigger draw. The roughly 20-building compound — with a gallery, studios, barns, henhouses, rabbit hutches, vegetable garden, orchard and more — is the perfect setting for a back-to-the-land children’s book. The soft-spoken Deans show me a half-yak, half-cow named Yeti, and tell me about making saddles and putting grain-bin roofs on yurts. “We’ve had people admit to us that they didn’t think they’d be that interested in visiting a farm-and-art space,” Jeffrey says, “but then they leave wishing we’d adopt them!” It’s easy to see why.

Alaska’s Route 1 terminates at the 4.5-mile Homer Spit, which fingers out into Kachemak Bay. Here, I find Salty Dawg Saloon, Alaska’s most famous bar. Housed in an old pioneer’s cabin and still patronized by weather-beaten commercial fishermen, the place is awash in dive-y charm, even if it probably sells more T-shirts than whiskies. I claim a barstool and let my thoughts wander while I nurse a beer. Nearly every inch of the interior is papered in dollar bills or scrawled with well-aged graffiti. Many people have left an imprint here over the decades, and no amount of branded merch will change that.

Rather than turn back at the end of the road, I park the car in an overnight spot and board a water taxi to Tutka Bay Lodge. It’s obvious I’ve arrived someplace special the moment the resort comes into view. The five guest cabins and enormous elevated deck overlook a private cove, and the surrounding woods are laced with mossy paths that lead to secluded rock beaches.

I only have a few minutes to explore the trails before it’s time to savor the culinary creations of lodge owner Mandy Dixon, who returned home to Alaska after stints at Le Cordon Bleu and the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. The evening bonanza includes meaty rockfish tempura in housemade XO sauce and bacon dashi, porcini mushrooms in burnt-onion butter, grilled king salmon dusted with charred leek ash and venison cannelloni over lamb-jus kohlrabi puree. This generous spread of fished, foraged and farmed delicacies is rustic yet elevated, infused with both Eastern and Western traditions. It’s hard to imagine a better showcase for Alaska’s natural bounty.

The lodgings, with their boxy armchairs and knotty pine walls, are simple by comparison, but tonight I have no problem nodding off, lulled to sleep by the laughing sound of loons out on the water.

In the gray light of early morning, the Kenai River is the color of bluestone. The river is running high from recent rains, but it’s still fishable, thank goodness. As a certifiable fly-fishing nut, I would have moped for days if we’d been forced to cancel.

Having risen early again to catch a water taxi and make the two-hour drive from Homer, I’m intent on scoring an Alaskan trifecta: a rainbow trout, a silver salmon and a Dolly Varden (an oddly named, trout-like char that I’ve never caught before). My guide is Jason Lesmeister, owner of Jason’s Guide Service. A Minnesota transplant who has worked the Kenai since 2006, he seems confident that we can do it, even if I’ve only booked him for half a day.

The Kenai is a legendary sport fishery, and I’m eager to cover this eight-mile upper stretch of it. “It’s easy enough that anyone can catch a fish, but tough enough that at least one person flips a boat and almost dies every season,” Lesmeister explains as he rows us out from the put-in just below Kenai Lake.

The river is also managed more intensively than most in Alaska, with stricter creel limits and catch-and-release protocols. Unethical anglers often want guides to bend the rules, but I get the sense that Lesmeister is immovable. He has an especially soft spot for the rainbow trout, which he calls “God’s favorite fish.”

By 9 o’clock, I’ve caught two of them. The first one’s spirited leaping and luminescent pink stripe did, in fact, add credence to the belief that rainbows are divinely favored. I’ve also netted two silvery Dolly Vardens, enabling me to cross that species off the bucket list and focus on the slightly more difficult task of landing a silver salmon.

Lesmeister rigs up a heftier rod with a streamer fly, which I’ll have to fish more actively than the egg patterns we used to fool the trout and Dollies. Crucially, he also locates a group of salmon in a back eddy. They’re close enough that I can see many of the fish I’m casting to, but they won’t take. One does pull on the fly, but quickly spits it out before I can set the hook.

After some persistence, though, I get an eight-pound hen on the line and land it. Lesmeister’s big fist bumps mine once we’ve released the fish safely back into the water. Mission accomplished: I’ve logged my triple. The truth is, I’d gladly keep going all day, but I’ve got an afternoon adventure planned at Alyeska Resort, about an hour’s drive back toward Anchorage.

On the 10-minute tram ride up the ski mountain, I learn from my guides that Alyeska is home to the longest continuous double-black-diamond ski run in North America. To spice up the warmer months, the resort’s new owners have strung a pair of suspension bridges across dizzyingly steep chutes. They’re the reason I’m up here.

Unless you’ve got a real fear of heights, crossing the bridges is more of an attraction than an adventure. That said, the views of distant glaciers and mountains wearing powdered wigs of snow are spectacular, and the thrill of hanging over the void sticks with me. My legs are still swaying when I unclip my harness and make the short walk back to the tram station.

Down at the base of the mountain, a reward awaits: 90 minutes in the Alyeska Nordic Spa, which opened two years ago, after a $15 million construction project. Rain begins to fall as I contemplate the assortment of plunge pools, tubs and bathhouses before me. Deciding that the wet conditions call for dry heat, I gravitate toward the cedar saunas, especially the ones that are tucked away in a forested corner of the outdoor bathing area.

I feel blissfully flushed out by the time I arrive at Seven Glaciers, the resort’s mountainside restaurant, for dinner. I think I might be hallucinating, too, because while the high-elevation scenery outside is cloaked in darkness, I’m seeing miniature versions of it on my plate. The dollop of whipped burrata atop a deconstructed gazpacho resembles one of those distant snowfields. And doesn’t that frisée look like alpine shrubbery?

The delivery of my entree dispels these high-altitude visions. A fillet of Alaskan salmon in a lemony caper-dill beurre blanc arrives before me and the orchard-fruit acidity of the soave classico in my glass cuts through it nicely. I register that effect only in passing, though, because I’m busy remembering the feeling of reeling in that last fish on the Kenai. Like the one I’m now eating with pan-seared maitake mushrooms, it was a silver salmon. That moment, this meal, these three days, are all worth savoring.