Seward Highway Drive Self-Guided Audio Tour

About this tour

In the year 2000, the federal government sat down to name the handful of roads in America that aren't a way to get somewhere — they're the reason you came. The Seward Highway made the list. One hundred and twenty-seven miles from the edge of Anchorage to an ice-free harbor on the Gulf of Alaska, and it holds three separate scenic-byway titles at once, which is a bit like a horse winning the Triple Crown and then being told it also has a lovely singing voice. For the first fifty miles the road is pinned between a mountain wall and a long gray finger of the sea called Turnagain Arm — named, it turns out, by a very famous explorer having a very bad day. You'll hear what he was actually looking for, and who else was standing on that deck: a young sailing master whose name you absolutely know, for reasons that had nothing to do with Alaska and everything to do with a ship he lost twelve years later. Along that water you'll find out why it's the color of wet concrete and why walking out onto it is one of the worst ideas available to you in the state of Alaska. You'll learn how to spot the white whales that surface in it, and how to tell the sheep on the cliff above your car from the goats everyone insists they are. You'll meet a fish so oily you can light one end and read by it — and the people who did exactly that, for centuries, on this shoreline. And twice a day this water does something so unusual that people drive out from Anchorage, park, and just wait for it. We'll tell you exactly where to stand and roughly when. Then the road climbs into the Kenai Mountains, and the story turns. You'll pass a town that survived four minutes of the second-largest earthquake ever recorded and then, quietly, sank eight feet into the sea — and you'll see what's left of the one down the road that didn't survive at all. You'll hear how the sea caught fire in Seward's harbor that same night, which sounds like an exaggeration until you hear the part about the fuel tanks. You'll meet a woman who ran a roadhouse out here alone and hand-fed a bear on her porch, a thirteen-year-old orphan whose homework is currently flying over every school in Alaska, and a creek named for a bird that has never once been seen within four thousand miles of it. By the end you'll roll into a working fishing port that is the starting line of the most famous sled-dog race on earth, the finish line of a mountain footrace that locals will tell you, with total sincerity, is harder — and the front door of a national park you can only reach by boat, on foot, or by one single road that we'll point out on the way in. Two and a half hours of driving. About twice that if you do it right. The tour runs in both directions — and the return leg isn't the same tour backwards. It's a different set of stories, told to a driver who now knows what they're looking at. Bring snacks. Charge your phone. The pullouts on this road are not consolation prizes — some of them are the reason people fly here.

Stops on this tour

1. 1Welcome to the Seward Highway
2. 2Tudor Road - The Bypass That Isn't
3. 3Leaving the Anchorage Bowl
4. 4The Zoo and the O'Malley Exit
5. 5The Old Seward Highway Splits Off
6. 6Potter Marsh Boardwalk Pullout
7. 7Potter Marsh - An Accidental Refuge
8. 8Potter Section House
9. 9The Turnagain Arm Trail
10. 10The 38-Foot Tide
11. 11Built in 1950, Rebuilt by the Quake
12. 12McHugh Creek
13. 13Beluga Point - White Whales in Gray Water
14. 14The Rock You're Standing On
15. 15Why the Water is Gray
16. 16Rainbow Valley
17. 17Windy Corner - Sheep at Sea Level
18. 18Sheep, Not Goats
19. 19Falls Creek
20. 20Indian Valley Mine
21. 21Hooligan - The Fish that Burns
22. 22Indian Creek
23. 23The Mudflats Are Not a Beach
24. 24The Bore Tide
25. 25Bird Creek
26. 26Bird Creek Campground & Bird Ridge
27. 27The Bird-to-Gird Path
28. 28The Railroad on the Water's Edge
29. 29Bird Point
30. 30Bore Tide Turnout
31. 31Bird-to-Gird's Best Bore View
32. 32Penguin Creek
33. 33Tidewater Slough
34. 34The Girdwood Turn
35. 35Virgin Creek Falls
36. 36The Town That Moved
37. 37Chugach National Forest: You're In It Now
38. 38Crow Creek Gold
39. 39Peterson Creek
40. 40Twentymile River Observation Platform
41. 41Twentymile River
42. 42Portage: Junction to Whittier
43. 43Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center
44. 44Placer River & the Glacier Train
45. 45Scenic Overlook Before the Mountains
46. 46Ingram Creek
47. 47Into the Kenai Mountains
48. 48Into the Mountains: The Wall Closes In
49. 49Turnagain Pass
50. 50The Avalanche Bowl
51. 51Bertha Creek: Where Prospectors Named the Water
52. 52Spokane Creek
53. 53Granite Creek & Johnson Pass North
54. 54East Fork Sixmile Bridge
55. 55Silvertip Creek
56. 56Canyon Creek & the Bridge
57. 57Hope Junction & Sixmile Whitewater
58. 58The Climb to the Lake District
59. 59Fresno Creek & Lower Summit Lake
60. 60Lower Summit Lake
61. 61Colorado Creek
62. 62Tenderfoot Creek Campground
63. 63Summit Lake Lodge
64. 64Summit Lake & Tenderfoot
65. 65Alaska Nellie's Country
66. 66Devil's Creek & Resurrection Pass
67. 67Tern Lake Junction: Handoff to the Sterling
68. 68Tern Lake Wildlife
69. 69Carter & Crescent Lakes
70. 70Johnson Pass South Trailhead
71. 71Trail Lakes Hatchery
72. 72Moose Pass
73. 73The Waterwheel
74. 74Crown Point
75. 75Trail River & Falls Creek
76. 76Trail River & Kenai Lake's Color
77. 77Ptarmigan Creek
78. 78Lawing: Alaska Nellie's Last Stop
79. 79Kenai Lake Viewpoint
80. 80Victor Creek
81. 81Snow River: Three Bridges
82. 82Primrose & Lost Lake
83. 83The Iditarod Trail Shares This Valley
84. 84Grayling Lake & Moose Country
85. 85Troop Lake
86. 86Bear Lake & Bear Creek Weir
87. 87Bear Creek & Salmon Creek
88. 88Lost Lake South Trailhead
89. 89Exit Glacier Road: The Only Road Into the Park
90. 90Resurrection River
91. 91Seward Airport & the Army Resort
92. 92Benny Benson Memorial
93. 93Welcome to Seward: Mile 0
94. 94Mile 0 of the Iditarod
95. 95Seward's Burning Sea: 1964
96. 96Mount Marathon
97. 97Resurrection Bay & Kenai Fjords
98. 98Leaving Seward, The Road North
99. 99Benny Benson, The Kid Who Made Alaska's Flag
100. 100One Last Look at Resurrection Bay
101. 101Nash Road & the Working Bay
102. 102Exit Glacier Road, What's Up That Valley
103. 103Lost Lake, the South Door
104. 104Bear Creek, Watch the Weir
105. 105Grouse Lake Mirror
106. 106Chugach National Forest, East Boundary
107. 107Grayling Lake Trailhead
108. 108Wildlife Viewing Flats
109. 109Lost Lake & the High Country
110. 110Snow River & the Braided Floor
111. 111Victor Creek Bridge Canyon
112. 112Kenai Lake, The Other Shore
113. 113Kenai Lake's Color Explained
114. 114Ptarmigan Creek, Red Fish Running
115. 115Crown Point & the Mines
116. 116Trail Lakes & the Fish Factory
117. 117Moose Pass, Slow Down, It's the Law of the Moose
118. 118Trail Lakes, Nineteen Million Fish
119. 119Johnson Pass South, The Two-Door Trail
120. 120Carter Lake, A Leg-Stretch With Trout
121. 121Tern Lake, Bipolar Birds
122. 122Tern Lake Junction, The Sterling Comes In
123. 123Devil's Pass & the Resurrection Trail
124. 124Summit Lakes, The Top of the Drive
125. 125Summit Lake Lodge & the Pie
126. 126Colorado Creek & Watershed Divide
127. 127Lower Summit Lake
128. 128The Canyon Runs With You
129. 129Hope Junction, The Town Time Forgot
130. 130Canyon Creek Bridge
131. 131East Fork Sixmile
132. 132Granite Creek & the Old Trail
133. 133Bertha Creek - Where the Name Came From
134. 134Turnagain Pass - The Snow Machine Capital
135. 135The Last Climb Before the Arm
136. 136Ingram Creek - The Arm Returns
137. 137Moose Alert - Willow Flats
138. 138Placer River & Spencer Glacier
139. 139Portage Junction - Tunnel Facts
140. 140Twentymile - Hooligan and Eagles
141. 141Peterson Creek - Back on the Flats
142. 142The Drowned Forest, Reconsidered
143. 143Chugach National Forest West Boundary
144. 144Crow Creek - Still Paying
145. 145Girdwood - Detour for the Tram
146. 146Tidewater Slough & the Last Tidal Pocket
147. 147Bird Point - The Bore Tide Grandstand
148. 148The Railroad Beneath You
149. 149The Bird-to-Gird Path
150. 150Bird Creek - Combat Fishing
151. 151Indian - The Old Mine
152. 152Windy Corner - Look Up for Sheep
153. 153Turnagain - Cook's Wrong Turn
154. 154Bligh Was Here Too
155. 155Beluga Point - One More Scan
156. 156McHugh Creek - The Last Pull-Off
157. 157The Mud That Keeps a Grudge
158. 158Tikahtnu - You've Crossed Back
159. 159Potter Section House
160. 160Potter Marsh - The Accidental Refuge
161. 161Potter Marsh Boardwalk
162. 162The Zoo Turnoff
163. 163Turnagain Heights - Where the Ground Failed
164. 164Welcome to Anchorage

Route map