Travel Ideas

Alaska is enormous (twice the size of Texas) and is home to just 400,000 or so loggers, fishermen and the odd waitress getting big tips due to Alaska’s infamous lack of women. Around 40% of the population live in Anchorage and so the rest of the state is vast, abundant nature that’s changed little in millennia.

There are endless rainforests, glaciers the size of Wales, sweeping plains, fjords to make Norway jealous and more mountains than you could ever want. And as there are so few humans around the wildlife runs wild and there are bears, wolves and moose everywhere, the latter frequently holding up traffic in the towns an cities.

Alaska isn’t exactly cheap but you can reach it by boat for under $300 from Seattle or fly from more or less the same. Tourism booms in summer sending hotel prices sky-high but as a real nature-junky you’ll be carrying your own all-seasons sleeping bag and industrial-strength bug repellent. The mosquito is famed as the ‘Alaska State Bird’.

You’ll need to know what you’re doing so that you don’t get mauled by bears, lost in the forest or die of exposure but the nature is as dramatic and awesome as anywhere you’re likely to find. And if you really want to feel that life is worth living then come back between December and March to see the display of the aurora borealis when the sky is lit up with shimmering lights.

The impressionable scientists claim it’s due to solar wind mixing with the Earth’s magnetic field but anyone who’s read Philip Pullman’s excellent Northern Lights will know that the aurora is the gateway between worlds…

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