Results tagged “Alaska” from Intelligent Travel Blog

During my recent visit to Alaska, one of my favorite places was the Kodiak Island Brewing Company, where I had the chance to chat with owner and master brewer Ben Millstein. Ben's an exceedingly friendly guy with a big bushy beard, and he was more than willing to pull us a few samples, which drain directly from the huge vats he keeps in the back.

A home-brewer-turned-businessman, Ben created a hub for local fishermen and off-duty Coast Guard officers who work nearby, and I watched as a steady stream of them came in for an afternoon brew (one had offered to work in exchange for his beer, and was tending to the tanks between visits to the tap). His mostly-organic selection of delicious beers comes with inventive names: Liquid Sunshine, Island Mist, Stab in the Dark, and of course, the beer that made him famous in these parts, the Sarah Pale Ale.

As a souvenir, I picked up a few of the posters they created for the brew--depicting the former governor as a winking St. Pauli Girl. The irresistible tagline: "You Betcha It's Good."

Kodiak Island Brewing Company 338 Sheilkoff Ave, Kodiak, Alaska +1 907 486-ALES.

Photo: Janelle Nanos. Image, Kodiak Island Brewing Company.

IT Editor Janelle Nanos is just back from an assignment in Alaska, and is posting some of the highlights from her trip. Check out her photo gallery after the jump.


No visit to Alaska can really be called complete unless you come face-to-face with a bear. Or at least that's how I rationalized my response to coming up close and personal with Scarface, a beat-up old brown bear who came lumbering toward me during my visit to Katmai National Park. While the rest of my group stood up to make themselves appear bigger and clapped their hands to make noise, I did exactly what my guide told us not to do: I froze. Then, I instinctively grabbed my camera, right as another, smaller bear ran past me, four feet to my right. Obscured by my viewfinder, I barely saw him. My father nearly had a heart attack.

Thankfully, Dad and I were in good hands: We'd signed up for a bear-viewing trip out of Kodiak, Alaska, with Sea Hawk Air. Our pilot, Roland Ruoss, is the owner of the company and has been flying his seaplane for over 20 years; his wife Jo Murphy, a Kodiak native, was our bear-viewing guide. We left the idyllic Trident Basin, just outside of downtown Kodiak (if you can call it such a thing) and within moments we were soaring over the island in the de Havilland Beaver floatplane. I was in the co-pilot seat.

In conjunction with his upcoming book, Here Is Where: In Search of America's Great Forgotten History, we're following historian and Legacy Project founder Andrew Carroll as he drives, flies, walks, boats, buses, bikes, and hikes to seek out little-known historic sites in all 50 states. Bookmark all of his posts here.

As a native Washingtonian raised in sweltering summers (which I've grown to love), I have nothing but admiration for those who can endure prolonged, thermometer-freezing winters. "It can get down to 40 below here in the winter," my Nome, Alaska, taxi driver told me during the short drive from the airport to the hotel. He also gave me an impromptu tour of some of his favorite sites. "There's one of the oldest bars in Alaska, some say the oldest," he said as we passed the Board of Trade Saloon.

The temperature was 50 degrees when I arrived, but it felt much colder in the drizzling rain. Most of the states I've visited so far have been in the 80s or 90s (Arizona was 110, South Dakota 70), and I didn't pack pants or long-sleeved shirts for this 50-state journey, just shorts and T-shirts.

I was prepared to stay warmly huddled in the hotel throughout my brief trip to Nome, which was really just a jumping off point to a remote Alaskan village I needed to visit. But I was starving by the time I finished packing, so I outlined a daring plan: I would race down Nome's main ("Front") street as quickly as possible, buy enough food at the local grocery store for both lunch and dinner, and then sprint back to the cozy safety of my hotel room.

Like many bold adventures, this one went quickly awry. Less than halfway to the grocery, I caught site of the town's local historical museum. Keep going, my freezing arms and legs pleaded. But I could not. This will only take a moment, I rationalized. It didn't. (It never does...)

After almost two hours of poring through binders full of old documents, photographs, maps, and property deeds, I had several intriguing little-known sites to find, most notably the boyhood home of James "Jimmy" Harold Doolittle.

I'm just back from two weeks with my dad in Alaska, and suffering a bit from a cold, but otherwise overwhelmingly impressed with my time there. Here are some highlights from Homer, our first stop on the trip.

Arriving in Homer, we were picked up by the very cocky and certainly sly cabbie named Josh, who was affable enough, but seemed to second guess our being there, as we didn't plan to fish. Homer's spit is a fishing hub, and consists of a row of weathered wooden buildings that one local calls the Las Vegas of Alaska, and it's easy to imagine, if you take away all the lights, and the showmanship, and the gambling. The real thing that the spit and the strip have in common is the people, who all seem to have a bit of a weathered edge, as if they've seen things you can't imagine. The buildings all are weathered too, wooden structures where you can purchase a sweater or a ride on a half day halibut boat. The place that most evoked Vegas was the Salty Dawg Saloon, a bar who ironically does not accept members of the canine persuasion, and whose attached lighthouse signal alerts its patrons to the fact that they're still serving. Wander inside and you'll find the bar covered floor to ceiling in dollar bills, and I swear that all the fishermen were drinking screwdrivers, in what I thought was an effort to fight off scurvy. "It was probably the special," one local noted later, and she was probably right.

Instead of fishing, we decided to visit the small artist colony of Halibut Cove onboard the Danny J ferry, a boat that brought WWII soldiers to Alaska in 1941. She's a sturdy old wooden boat that stands out in the harbor amongst the sea of aluminum fishing vessels laden with nets. During the war, she served as an open skiff and could hold 75 men; afterward she was used by Halibut schooners. While waiting at the dock, I learned a few things about Homer from the museum-like placards placed along the walkway: sea otters can be up to 100 pounds, and eat up to 20 pounds a day. Nice. And there was some fascinating information about Frederica de Laguna, "a 24-year-old adventuresome archeologist [who] pieced together the sites from Kachemak Bay, and discovered that people 2,000 years ago hunted seals, porpoise, marmots, birds, and fished for halibut, built homes of wood and kept dogs, wore ornaments of wood, bone, and pierced their noses, ears and lips." She studied in Homer from 1930-1932 and was originally from Pennsylvania.

My father and I are heading out to Alaska's Aleutian Islands next week while I work on a story for the magazine; it's one of the more remote places in the country, and also happens to be where my grandfather was stationed during WWII. We wanted to take Grandpa with us, only there was one problem. He's dead.

Grandpa lived a long, full life and died three years ago now, but his ashes are still in an urn in my uncle's house. "Why not scatter some of them in Alaska while you're there?" my aunt suggested, and, while it seems like a fitting place to do so, I had one major concern. Would TSA let ashes through security, or would I have to FedEx Grandpa to Alaska? This was not a prospect I savored. Luckily, TSA responded quickly to my question.

Lauren Gaches in their press office got right back and said yes, Grandpa can come on the plane, as long as he's well-behaved. Which means the ashes must be in a container (preferably wood or plastic) that can go through the X-ray scanner. The screeners on hand are respectful of the deceased, she said, and don't need to open the containers, but it depends on your airline as to whether they allow ashes to carried on board in a checked bag or carry-on. So it's best to touch base with them beforehand about their preference. She also directed me to their website, where you can find TSA's policies for transporting the deceased. I just called my airline, and they confirmed TSA's guidlines, noting that their requirement specify that a death or cremation certificate is needed to verify the container's contents.

So that's one big huge check on my checklist taken care of, and a tremendous relief at the same time. Thanks to TSA and Delta for their help. 

Photo: √oхέƒx™ via the Intelligent Travel Flickr pool

Alaska's Kachemak Bay spans over 400,000 acres of glaciers, mountains and wilderness. And tucked along its coastline is the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, which travel writer David Hanson recently visited.

There's that old question: If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be? I don't like that question because it makes my head spin with all the possibilities. But recently the answer came to me in the form of a 66-year-old man sitting across the table. I was at the lodge he and his wife built almost forty years ago on the rugged southern shores of Alaska's Kachemak Bay. Michael and Diane McBride moved to this chunk of fir forest, basalt cliff and rocky beach in the mid '60s when no white person lived here permanently. Michael was a bush pilot and boat captain, and they both fished commercially until deciding to build a lodge and invite people to stay.

The problem with the "dinner with anyone in the world" question is that it leaves the parameters up to you, and that is limiting. Never would I have put together a person like Michael: bush pilot, sea captain, master hunting guide, fisherman, yoga instructor, carpenter, lodge owner, environmental warrior (his efforts defeated two resource extraction initiatives), father, grandfather, musician, and member of Explorer's Club, Royal Geographic Society, Smithsonian Board, and Nature Conservancy. Tonight, over dessert, he played an accordion he picked up in Austria decades ago.

Have you ever wanted to mush with an Iditarod dogsled team? Well here's your chance: On December 1, the bidding begins for the annual IditaRide Auction. The event is in its 15th year, and is one of the main fundraisers for the famous Iditarod Trail Ride Dog Sled Race. A winning bid will let you ride along with a team through 11 miles of Anchorage parkland and "a screaming crowd of spectators," says Deby Trosper, the auction coordinator. It all takes place on the day before the official Iditarod begins in March, and gets you an inside glimpse of the "Last Great Race on Earth." Given, it's a small glimpse (the actual race covers 1,100 miles and typically takes nine days), but it sounds like a fantastic time.

Trosper says bids average about $1,400, but if you want to lock in a spot, you can secure one for $7,500. So what exactly, can you expect if you get a winning bid? You most likely won't get to drive the sled, she says, as the experienced drivers will handle that. But you will get to sit in the front, right behind the dogs, and get showered with hotdogs and muffins, offered by cheering fans along the route. "We encourage folks to bring pillows" to sit on, she adds. "You're in a birch sled about five inches off the ground." It's best to wear warm clothing (layers), boots, hats and gloves, and watch out for moose ("A lot of times there's an opportunity to get a taste of the Big Wild," Trosper notes). The entire trip takes about an hour to complete, and when they're done, the mushers-to-be get off their sleds looking "like little kids at Christmas." She says that many of the IditaRiders often get pretty attached to their mushers, and will try to get to the Iditarod finish line in Nome, Alaska, to see them win. If you can get up there for the winning celebration, it's like "Alaska's Mardi Gras." But take note: hotels are hard to come by, and often book up a year in advance.