Map view
Horseshoe Lake Trail, Denali National Park
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: June-Aug
Cost: $
- Denali National Park and Preserve is located in Interior Alaska, centered on Denali, the highest mountain in North America
- The park encompasses an area larger than the state of New Hampshire
- Denali's landscape is a mix of forest at the lowest elevations, including deciduous taiga, with tundra at middle elevations, and glaciers, snow, and bare rock at the highest elevations
#15 in Best National Parks in the USA
#35 in Best Attractions in the USA
Photo Point Trail, Mendenhall Glacier
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: May-Aug
Cost: $
- Glacier about 13.6 miles (21.9 km) long, about 12 miles (19 km) from downtown Juneau
- The glacier has also retreated 1.75 miles (2.82 km) since 1929, when Mendenhall Lake was created, and over 2.5 miles (4.0 km) since 1500
- The end of the glacier currently has a negative glacier mass balance and will continue to retreat in the foreseeable future
Thunderbird Falls Trail, Chugach State Park
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: June-Aug
Cost: $
- Park covering a hilly region east of Anchorage, and the third-largest state park in the United States
Nugget Falls Trail, Tongass National Forest
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: May-Aug
Cost: $
- The Tongass National Forest, in Southeast Alaska, is the largest U.S. National Forest
- Most of its area is temperate rain forest and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna
- It is one of the last remaining intact temperate rainforests in the world
Northern Lights, Fairbanks
Best time to visit: Aug-Sept
Cost: $$$
- An aurora is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic)
- Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky
- Auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind
- Most of the planets in the Solar System, some natural satellites, brown dwarfs, and even comets also host auroras
Exit Glacier Overlook Trail, Kenai Fjords National Park
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: June-Aug
Cost: $
- Glacier derived from the Harding Icefield, and one of Kenai Fjords National Park's major attractions
- It is one of the most accessible valley glaciers in Alaska and is a visible indicator of glacial recession due to climate change
- Exit Glacier retreated approximately 187 feet (57 m) from 2013 to 2014 and park scientists continue to monitor and record the glacier's accelerating recession
Forest Trail, Glacier Bay National Park
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: May-Aug
Cost: $
- National park located west of Juneau, with about 80% of visitors to Glacier Bay arrive on cruise ships
- The park and preserve hosts many outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, mountaineering, kayaking, rafting, fishing, and bird-watching
- Within the park and preserve there are two Tlingit ancestral homelands that are of cultural and spiritual significance to living communities today
Moose Creek Bluff Trail, North Pole
Walk difficulty: Easy
Best time to visit: Aug-Sept
Cost: $
- North Pole is a small city in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, and despite its name, the city is about 1,700 miles (2,700 km) south of Earth's geographic North Pole and 125 miles (200 km) south of the Arctic Circle
- North Pole's biggest attraction is a gift shop named Santa Claus House, the modern-day incarnation of a trading post (gift shop) established in the town's early days
- The Santa Claus House is known for the world's largest fiberglass statue of Santa Claus outside
- Before Christmas each year, the USPS post office in North Pole receives hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa Claus, and thousands more from people wanting the town's postmark on their Christmas greeting cards to their families
Aurora Dora, Talkeetna
Best time to visit: Aug-Sept
Cost: $$$
- Extensive gallery and studio offering photography workshops for capturing a photo of Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights, located in the Talkeetna area
Hubbard Glacier
Best time to visit: May-Aug
Cost: $$$
- Glacier located in Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in eastern Alaska and Kluane National Park and Reserve in Yukon, Canada
- It takes about 400 years for ice to traverse the length of the glacier, meaning that the ice at the foot of the glacier is about 400 years old
- The glacier routinely calves off icebergs the size of a ten-story building
- Where the glacier meets the bay, most of the ice is below the waterline, and newly calved icebergs can shoot up quite dramatically, so that ships must keep their distance from the edge of the glacier in Disenchantment Bay