Big federal parks are a draw for many, but state parks are often local favorites. Alaska has over three million acres of state parks, more than any other state. Its 156 parks stretch from north of Fairbanks to Kodiak to the islands of the southeast panhandle. Some are small, like the 40-acre Halibut Point Recreation Area along Sitka’s road system. Others are sprawling, like the 1.6-million-acre Wood-Tikchik State Park north of Dillingham, which with its clear-water lakes and soaring mountains is the largest state park in the country. Opportunities vary across the state park system. They include full RV hook-ups at the parks along the Alaska Highway between Fairbanks and Tok, or the remote wilderness of the 500,000-acre Chugach State Park outside of Anchorage, where you might see more moose than people. Some parks, like Totem Bight in Ketchikan, are set aside for historical purposes. Others, like the Alaska Chilkat…
Welcome to the future Alaska is hot, welcome to the future. It might be time for snowbirds to rethink their second home or retirement condo in Florida. The world is hot and getting hotter, and while Alaska is leading the way, I’d like to illuminate the bright side of global warming. Consider home gardening. In the 1970s, Anchorage was a terrible place to grow tomatoes. Now, you can harvest your own tomatoes and even okra—unthinkable even in the 1990s—in Alaska. Robins once migrated south to warmer climes in the fall (just like many Alaskans), but now they overwinter in Homer. Fireweed blooms no longer reliably predict the first freeze. Red fox have been moving north and taking over the territory of arctic fox. Heck, even the bears in Kodiak didn’t hibernate until late December last year, before announcing it was spring by emerging in early March. If the reactions of…
An earthquake and landslide in Lituya Bay unleashed the largest wave ever recorded, and there are more monster tsunamis in Alaska history.
From a giant who steals salmon to little people who hoist caribou overhead, sightings of odd beings aren’t uncommon in Alaska.
Michelle Theall shares a few images from places she’s visited often in Alaska and the story behind each photo.
One man is restoring a home on Afognak Island that was one of a few structures surviving in the Village of Afognak after the 1964 earthquake.
From providing vitamin C for early settlers to being the backbone of commercial agriculture in the state, potatoes are vital to Alaska.
Senior Editor Michelle Theall shares her journey of buying a home in Alaska and photos of the places she considered.
Alaska steambath culture predates Western contact. Steambaths were a place for healing. Many rural cabins still have saunas.
People have used glacier ice from Alaska to cool their cocktails since at least the 1850s. The company Alaska Glacial Ice still harvests ice for cocktails.