May 2016

“What do you mean we can’t have our mini van?” “Why are we paying  180 more dollars?” Our trip starting out something like that, however, after getting the vehicle situation straightened out, we were on the road in our 4 runner.

8 days, 5 towns.

Days 1 Anchorage: We started at a local market and made our way around shop and restaurants. We checked out some small hiking areas and wandered around the town.  We headed back to the hostel and met a load of cool people. We ended up sticking around for the rest of the evening and hanging out at a bon fire with everyone out back until midnight. Rachel decided not to sleep. You all damn well know I slept though. It was all very rad.

Days 2&3 Seward: After a beautiful drive and a brief stop at a wildlife reserve, we scoped out a nice car camping spot at a camp ground off the beaten path. We then took a walk around the beach, grabbed dinner and did a nice late night (9pm) hike. In the morning we packed up and headed to Kenai Fjords National Park for a hike. We saw a glacier and hiked about 1500 ft until the snow stopped us. We then headed back to our hostel for some dinner and recoup time when we ran into a fellow traveler, Adrain, we had seen at our previous hostel in Anchorage. We all went out to a locals bar and played some darts to end the night. We ended up finding out that he was on basically the same trail across central Alaska as we were.

Day 4 Homer: BEAUTIFUL. We got there after a long drive partially backtracking what we had done the previous day. We drove out to the peninsula, grabbed some food and drank, then headed onto a boat! We were able to hop a boat for about an hour which was awesome. We crossed the Kachemak Bay and made a circle. When we headed back we found our friend Adrain and claimed our beach camping spot. We grabbed some over-priced dinner, drinks at another locals bar, and firewood  off of the beach for our campsite.  We chilled by the fire and admired the bay and mountains until there were embers.

Days 5&6 Talkeetna, Day 7 Denali: LONG drive from the tip of Homer, passing back through Anchorage, up to Talkeetna. This was my favorite town after Homer. It’s pretty much in the middle of the woods and contains one badass brewery. We also met Adrain here, too. I passed out in the hostel early after dinner and that was that. The following day we headed up to Denali National Park aka the biggest disappointment of the trip. We saw hazy Mt McKinley in the distance which was rad. We saw some Caribou, too. But other than that it was like driving 30 miles through a dry field with mountains pretty far in the distance, nothing like Rocky Mountain National. It was underwhelming to us and we were bummed that we didn’t get to drive further into the park where the overwhelming scenery is. We headed back to our hostel early and hung out the rest of the evening. It was a really cool hostel though, log cabin style. We headed back to Talkneeta early and met up with Adrain for a nice 2 mile hike around a lake. We freshened up and went into town for a final evening with some locals. There was live music at this local bar and I danced with a mountain man. Literally.

Day 7 Anchorage: We got back to Anchorage, ate at the Purple Moose (badass pizza) and went to the zoo. It was random, but we really didn’t know what else to do. We then walked around aimlessly for a while and drank some beers. We then drank more beers at a cool brewery we found and then went back into town and waited for our flight. I passed out on the floor of the airport and then we went home.

We were also irresponsible.

We lived. The End.