Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, in south-central Alaska near the Canadian border, is the largest national park in the United States at over 13 million acres — roughly the size of six Yellowstones. It’s a park of superlatives: it contains four major mountain ranges, nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the U.S. (including […]
Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city, sits in the state’s interior at the confluence of the Chena and Tanana Rivers. It’s a common base for two very different reasons: winter aurora viewing and summer access to the far north. Getting There Fairbanks International Airport has direct flights from Seattle, Anchorage, and a few other West Coast cities,
Juneau is Alaska’s capital, and unusually for a state capital, it has no road connection to the rest of the state or to Canada — you can only get there by air or water. It’s tucked between the Coast Mountains and the Gastineau Channel, with the Mendenhall Glacier just outside town. Getting There Most independent
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, in southeastern Alaska, protects 3.3 million acres of fjords, tidewater glaciers, and temperate rainforest, and is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s one of the few places on Earth where you can watch glaciers actively calving into the sea. Getting There Glacier Bay has no road connection to
Kenai Fjords National Park sits on the Kenai Peninsula, about a 2.5-hour drive south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. Covering roughly 670,000 acres, the park is dominated by the Harding Icefield, an ice sheet feeding dozens of glaciers that spill down toward the coast. Getting There The park’s road-accessible section is just outside Seward,
