On 5 July 2020, in the middle of COVID, we bought a one-way ticket to Alaska. International travel had become nearly impossible, and instead of waiting for the world to reopen, we decided to stay in the United States and go as far north and as wild as we could. Alaska turned out to be exactly the right place.
It was not an easy time to travel. Restaurants were mostly closed, planning took more effort, and everything had to be done with a bit more care. But that also made the trip more intimate. We spent long days outside, drove, explored, met people, and had one of the strongest family trips we have ever taken. Thanks to Mead for the many tips and introductions that helped open up Alaska for us.
We spent quite a bit of time in Talkeetna, a small town with a very particular Alaskan character and a strong connection to flying, climbing, and the mountains. We met extraordinary people there, went flying, and began to understand how central aviation is to life in Alaska. The scale of the landscape is hard to explain until you see it from the air: rivers, forests, mountains, glaciers, and distances that make everything feel bigger.
From there we went north to Fairbanks, where we spent time with Joe Reeves at Boneyard Alaska, surrounded by old machines, aircraft, stories, and the kind of practical Alaskan ingenuity that seems to exist everywhere up there. We also tried our hand at gold panning, and went further east of Fairbanks to the hot springs, a strange and memorable contrast to the vastness and roughness of the interior.
In 2021, we returned. Part of the trip was about reconnecting with friends we had made the year before, and part of it became a new journey. The kids went on to summer camp, while Daphne and I continued further north to Barrow — now Utqiaġvik — the northernmost community in the United States. Standing at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, in a place so far north and so different from the rest of the country, felt like another piece of the larger polar story that has shaped many of my travels.
That same trip also took us south to Sitka and other places along Alaska’s Pacific side. This was a very different Alaska: coastal, green, wet, full of water, islands, history, and wildlife. The contrast between the interior, the Arctic, and the Pacific coast is part of what makes Alaska so compelling. It is not one landscape, but many worlds stitched together.
In 2022, I returned again for an Explorers Club Board trip, beginning far south on the Kenai Peninsula and making the journey north all the way to Fairbanks. By then Alaska had become more than a one-time COVID escape. It had become a place of friends, stories, aircraft, roads, camps, cold water, long distances, and repeated returns.
Looking back, those three years in Alaska — 2020, 2021, and 2022 — were some of the most important travel years for our family. They were not polished or easy trips. They were improvised, sometimes complicated, and often shaped by the limits of the pandemic. But maybe that is why they mattered. Alaska gave us space, adventure, and time together when much of the world felt closed.
