Places to go in Alaska.

Springs, beaches, parks and gardens worth the drive. Save the ones you want to visit and tick off the ones you’ve been to.

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9 places

Mountains

Denali National Park

Denali Park, AK · Interior Alaska

Denali National Park is built around Denali itself, the 20,310-foot giant that is the highest peak in North America, looming over six million acres of Alaskan tundra, taiga, and braided rivers. A single 92-mile road threads the wilderness, where park buses turn up grizzlies, caribou, moose, and Dall sheep against the backdrop of the Alaska Range. Visit between mid-May and early September, when the buses run and the mountain is most likely to show.

Mountains

Gates of the Arctic National Park

Bettles, AK · Brooks Range, Interior Alaska

Gates of the Arctic is the least-visited and most uncompromising park in the system, 8.5 million roadless acres straddling the Brooks Range entirely above the Arctic Circle near Bettles, Alaska. There are no trails, no campgrounds, and no cell service, so you bush-plane in and route your own way past granite spires like the Arrigetch Peaks and along wild rivers such as the Alatna. Come in summer, when the Western Arctic caribou herd, some 225,000 strong, threads through the valleys.

Mountains

Glacier Bay National Park

Gustavus, AK · Southeast Alaska

Glacier Bay is a living showcase of ice meeting the sea, a network of fjords near Gustavus where more than ten tidewater glaciers spill toward salt water. The headliner is Margerie Glacier at the head of Tarr Inlet, a mile-wide wall that calves house-sized slabs into the bay with a crack like thunder. More than 90 percent of visitors arrive by cruise ship, but summer kayakers and tour boats also catch the roughly 100 humpback whales that feed here.

Volcanoes

Katmai National Park

King Salmon, AK · Alaska Peninsula

Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula is famous for its brown bears, which gather at Brooks Falls each summer to snatch leaping salmon midair, the scene behind the wildly popular Fat Bear Week. The park was born from catastrophe: the 1912 Novarupta eruption, the largest of the 20th century, buried a valley in ash now called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Most visitors arrive by floatplane.

Lakes & rivers

Kenai Fjords National Park

Seward, AK · Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Kenai Fjords is where ice meets the sea, a 600,000-acre park outside Seward, Alaska where the 700-square-mile Harding Icefield feeds roughly 40 glaciers that grind down to the Gulf of Alaska. Exit Glacier is the one spot reachable by road, with trails leading right up to the receding ice or climbing 3,000 feet to an icefield overlook. Most visitors take a summer boat tour to watch tidewater glaciers calve and spot whales, sea otters, and puffins.

Canyons & deserts

Kobuk Valley National Park

Kotzebue, AK · Northwest Arctic Alaska

One of the least-visited parks in the country, Kobuk Valley sits above the Arctic Circle with no roads, trails, or services, reachable only by bush plane or boat from Kotzebue. Its strangest feature is the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, 25 square miles of rolling sand left by Ice Age glaciers, the largest active dune field in the Arctic. Each fall, hundreds of thousands of caribou ford the Kobuk River at Onion Portage in one of North America's great migrations.

Volcanoes

Lake Clark National Park

Port Alsworth, AK · Southwest Alaska

Lake Clark is a land of fire and ice where two active volcanoes, Redoubt and Iliamna, rise above 10,000 feet over turquoise glacial lakes and the Chigmit Mountains. The roadless park near Port Alsworth holds one of Alaska's densest brown bear populations, drawn to the coastal sedge flats and the salmon-rich waters that feed Bristol Bay. Fly in to watch bears graze the tidal meadows, paddle the 40-mile namesake lake, or hike the Tanalian trails for sweeping Aleutian Range views.

Mountains

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Copper Center, AK · Southcentral Alaska

Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest national park in the country, over 13 million acres of south-central Alaska where the Wrangell, St. Elias, Chugach, and eastern Alaska ranges converge. It holds nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the US and some of the continent's largest icefields, plus the red ruins of the Kennecott copper mill near McCarthy. Two rough roads and bush planes are the only ways in.

Springs

Chena Hot Springs Resort

Fairbanks, AK · Interior Alaska, near Fairbanks

Chena Hot Springs sits at 65 degrees north, directly under the auroral oval, 56.5 miles northeast of Fairbanks and clear of city glow. That geometry does the work: green shows up overhead rather than low on the horizon, and you can watch it while floating in Rock Lake, a boulder-rimmed geothermal pool that runs about 106 degrees, adults 18 and over. On active nights the resort runs a tracked SUSV up Charlie Dome for open-sky views from a heated yurt. The Aurora Ice Museum holds 25 degrees year round. At 1,158 feet, cold, not altitude, is what you plan around. Know before you go: aurora season runs September through March, and a clear, moonless night is the one worth chasing. The pool house closes at 11:45 pm, last admission 11:30, so soak early and save the darkest hours after midnight for the open resort grounds.