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Kachemak Bay
Travel

6 Road Trips for Summer Fun

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We could have filled several issues of Alaska magazine with driving excursions in the Great Land. Instead, we decided to focus on a few tried-and-true road trips and will direct you to our sister publication The MILEPOST® as the definitive guide to making your way mile by mile throughout every region of the state, along with the places to stop for rest, food, lodging, and activities—as well as how to stay safe and be prepared in remote regions. On the following pages, you’ll find easily accessible journeys with manageable mileage and plenty to see and do enroute and upon arrival. Let’s hit the road!

Dakhká Khwaán Dancers
30-Second Reads

Inland Tlingits to Open Celebration

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Above: The Dakhká Khwaán Dancers. Photo courtesy Simon Ager The Dakhká Khwáan Dancers from Whitehorse, Yukon, are the lead dance group at this month’s Celebration in Juneau, the region’s largest Alaska Native gathering. It’s the first time in the event’s 42-year history that the lead dancers hail from outside of southeast Alaska. “We are the first Interior Tlingit group to be given the honor,” says Marilyn Jensen-Yadułtin, the founder and leader of the group since 2007. “We are very humbled, honored, and excited.” As lead dancers, they will sing and drum as dozens of groups file onstage during Celebration’s opening and closing events. Jensen-Yadułtin says it takes “tremendous endurance,” as each performance requires three hours of non-stop singing and dancing. The group has practiced for months and will debut new regalia, songs, and masks. First formed in Carcross, Yukon, the Dakhká Khwáan Dancers have grown from six to 30 members…

30-Second Reads

History: March 1903

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ALASKA GETS ITS FIRST “ALL-AMERICAN” TELEGRAPH CONNECTION On March 2, 1903, Congress funded undersea telegraph cables between Seattle, Sitka, and Juneau, which would connect Alaska’s military posts to their Washington, D.C., headquarters. Previously, Alaskan telegraphs reached the Lower 48 via Canadian wires. To tackle the job, the U.S. Army used a Spanish ship seized off the coast of Cuba in 1898, during the Spanish-American War. Named the Rita by the Spanish, the army redubbed it the Burnside, after Civil War major general Ambrose Burnside. The nearly 300-foot iron steamer could carry 300 miles of cable. The Burnside finished laying the first 291 miles of cable between Sitka and Juneau in October 1903. By the following August, it had strung over 1,000 miles of line from Sitka to Seattle. Under further appropriations, the Burnside extended the cables from Sitka to Valdez in 1904 and on to Seward in 1905. Twenty years…

kyle worl
Activities

Kyle Worl on the Meaning of the Arctic Winter Games

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Kyle Worl is an athlete and coach competing in the arctic sports category of this month’s Arctic Winter Games, being held in the Mat-Su valley. The arctic sports events, which originated over many generations in Indigenous communities across the circumpolar north, are a high- light of the games. They include the two-foot high kick, knuckle hop, and other sports linked to Indigenous hunting skills. The Arctic Winter Games also host com- petitions in hockey, skiing, skating, and other sports.

Nick Jans far and wide
Authentic Alaska

Far and Wild

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Carving your own slice of wilderness Standing on the bank of an arctic river, you gaze down into water so clear you can see char ghosting at the bottom of a 10-foot pool. The river pours downstream, cutting its way through a valley hewn of rock and tundra—a hard, beautiful place cast in surreal light. Your inflatable raft lies skidded up on the gravel, and a pot of water steams over a fire. You’ll make a few casts for dinner and spend the night here, not far from fresh-edged tracks of wolf and grizzly. There’s no one but you in this valley; nor in the next, or the one beyond. It’s been six days since your bush plane drop-off, and another half dozen until the river swirls past an off-grid village. You’ll take your time as you go, making side hikes, pausing often to watch and listen, to feel yourself…

The lodge’s grounds overlook Hole-in-the-Wall Glacier
Authentic Alaska

Mary Joyce and the Taku Glacier Lodge

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One woman’s epic adventures in Southeast Alaska This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Taku Glacier Lodge. The lodge has had a number of owners, but none stand out as much as the pioneer and adventurer Mary Joyce. Her story is a local legend, but she’s mostly unknown outside of Juneau. In 1929, Joyce was in her early 20s and working as a nurse in a Los Angeles hospital when she began attending to a patient named Leigh Hackley “Hack” Smith. The charismatic, wealthy, self-destructive young man had been wounded in World War I and needed another surgery to remove shrapnel from his shoulder.  Hack had fired his previous eight nurses. Between physical and mental wounds, Hack had become addicted to morphine and booze. Joyce is remembered as being fearless and sharp, and Hack didn’t fire her. Instead, the two developed a deep bond. Hack’s mother, Erie, offered Joyce…

The ZipRider is the longest zipline in the world.
Southeast

Icy Strait Point 

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Alaska’s version of a Caribbean private island Around 20 years ago, there was talk of creating a new Alaskan cruise destination, somewhat akin to the private island cruise ports in the Caribbean that had proven so popular. More than one company was said to be developing the concept. The one that came to fruition was Icy Strait Point, owned and operated by the Huna Totem Corporation. Icy Strait Point welcomed its first ship, Celebrity Cruises’ Mercury, on May 23, 2004. Since then, it has become a fixture on southeast Alaskan cruise itineraries. Its position some 30 miles west of Juneau on Chichagof Island, near the entrance to Glacier Bay National Park, puts it right in the path of cruise ships traveling the Inside Passage. Virtually every cruise line operating in Alaska calls here, and it’s not just the obvious megaship names like Princess and Royal Caribbean. Smaller yacht-like luxury ships…

Nick jans
Authentic Alaska

Spotting Alaska’s Wild Creatures 

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More than you see, fewer than you think peered around a boulder and there they were: a half dozen Dall rams bedded down, the nearest so close I could see my reflection in an amber eye framed by a curl of horn. They turned their heads to regard me but didn’t rise; instead, they gave what seemed to be a collective shrug as I settled in and raised my camera. I spent the next hours among them in the late August sun as they napped and grazed along the edge of that rock-strewn ridge, the air so still I could hear the echoing rush of the creek 2,000 feet below. That afternoon, still vivid after decades, explains as well as any why I came to Alaska: to meet wild animals in big, wild country. Pretty much everyone Alaska-bound hopes, even expects, the same. No doubt they’re out there, millions of…

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