Hiking up to Exit Glacier, now so much further away from the roads than it was a decade ago.
We would say “hello from Alaska!” but we’ve actually already left. Boo! We don’t want to leave Alaska! We want to go back to one of the most magical places we’ve ever visited, honestly. Unfortunately we only had three times to explore Anchorage and the surrounding areas this time, but based on all the beautiful things we saw, we’re definitely going back for more some day.
Here’s a bunch of photos & a few thanks to our lovely sponsors. The shots are from our roadtrips we did on the Seward HIghway, south of Anchorage and especially, from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center where we managed to capture a bathing bear… and feel like life will never be the same again.
The AWCC does some amazing work: for example, we were blown away by the story of them reintroducing the wood bison back into the Alaskan nature. You should definitely check out some of the stories they have. Amazing.
You’ll find more photos of the bathing bear & many of this friends at the end of this post, but first, a few travel photos from Alaska…
During our amazing autumn adventure to Alaska, British Columbia and the United Kingdom we’ll be doing a lot of driving. So what better partner in crime to have than Hertz? They’ve been super helpful in making our travels a little bit smoother; we’re using their Gold Plus Rewards program to make it super easy to pick up a car and return it at each airport. For example: in Anchorage it literally took us seconds to get our car keys and to get on our way.
We can’t wait to show Hertz all the places we’ve taken their vehicles! The sceneries so far have been mind-blowing.
During the two days in Alaska alone we saw so many beautiful things: lakeside rest areas with incredible mountain reflections in the water, bald eagles soaring high up above us, rolling hills colored purple by the autumn heather; rivers, mudflats, sunrises and sunsets. It’s really hard to try and translate Alaska into photos that do it justice, but you’ll just have to believe it: a priceless experience.
On our second day in Alaska we stopped by Exit Glacier. The photos in the info signs promised us selfies with the ice. However, the glacier has actually shrunk so much in the recent years that hiking up to it was no longer safe. The rough terrains in the mountains aren’t really something we, as rather inexperienced hikers, wanted to take on.
But we did get close enough to it to feel the cool winds and snap some selfies, along with this climbing photo featuring our beautiful new hiking shoes & jackets kindly provided by Partioaitta! They’re an outdoors shop with a long history and a vast knowledge on hiking & outdoor gear. Again, something that we city girls really needed: help with mountain-y adventures.
The glacier was another thing we won’t forget anytime soon. You can literally feel the cold air around it and hear the melting waters running through it, underneath it and out in the open. Just indescribable and very much worth the 3 mile hike.
You can’t possibly imagine the feeling of having two huge, comfortable beds waiting for you after a 16-hour day of hiking and adventuring unless you’ve done it yourself: these were our little sleep nests at the Historic Anchorage Hotel. See how even our luggage matches the furniture? A perfect match!
Right now we’re on our way to Vancouver, but just enjoying a relaxed layover at the Minneapolis/St.Paul airport. We’ll be sharing some filming location photos and travel stories on our channels later on, but right now… we’ll just have to leave you with the bathing bear and other lovely memories from Alaska.
(Don’t you just want to travel there now? We hope the answer is yes, because those long flights are definitely worth it!)
Last but not least; the biggest Thank You to KLM Finland for taking us safely from one city to another for four whole weeks! We can’t wait to share our adventures with everyone. The first days have definitely been a great start for it all!
Content collaboration: This roadtrip was partly sponsored by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. We received complimentary flights to the destination.