Sterling Highway Self-Guided Audio Tour

About this tour

Most people drive this road and see a pretty highway to Homer. You're about to find out what it actually is. From the moment you turn west at Tern Lake, this GPS-triggered audio guide rides shotgun for all 143 miles — playing automatically, hands-free, exactly where each story lives. No cell service required. No stopping to read a sign. You'll follow the Kenai River from its glacier-blue headwaters to the sea, and learn why its water is that color and why the world's largest sport-caught king salmon — a fish that still hasn't been beaten in forty years — came out of it. You'll drive across six thousand years of continuous human history at a bend in the river where families have taken salmon since before the pyramids, and hear who still lives there today. You'll cross a refuge that burns on purpose, pass the unlikely patch of ground where the entire modern state of Alaska was born, and reach a coast where fishing boats are launched into the open ocean by farm tractors because the tides won't allow anything else. Then the volcanoes come out. Four of them, standing across Cook Inlet — including the beautiful one that once reached up and switched off all four engines of a fully loaded jumbo jet in the dark. And at the very end, the road tips over a ridge called Baycrest Hill and Kachemak Bay opens up underneath you all at once. Everybody pulls over. Nobody plans to. You already booked the drive. This is what turns it into the best day of the trip.

Stops on this tour

1. 1Turning West at Tern Lake
2. 2Daves Creek - Dolly Water
3. 3Quartz Creek Into the Lake
4. 4Parking Pull-Outs to Mile 55
5. 5Crescent Creek and the Cabin Hike
6. 6Cooper Landing Services
7. 7Quartz Creek Campground and Dall Sheep
8. 8Kenai Lake Turns Glacier-Blue
9. 9Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge
10. 10The Kenai River Headwaters
11. 11Snug Harbor Road and Cooper Lake
12. 12Cooper Landing Visitor Cabin
13. 13Joseph Cooper's Gold
14. 14Sqilantnu - Thousands of Years on This River
15. 15The Upper Kenai's Big Rainbows
16. 16Cooper Creek Campground
17. 17Russian River Campground and Falls
18. 18K'beq' - Footprints
19. 19Combat Fishing at the Confluence
20. 20The Ferry with No Motor
21. 21The Bear Highway Crosses Here
22. 22Into the Kenai Canyon
23. 23New Point
24. 24Hidden Lake Campground
25. 25Skilak's Big Lakes and Trails
26. 26Welcome to the Kenai Refuge
27. 27Jean Lake
28. 28Skyline Trail - Straight Up
29. 29Parking at Mile 62.3
30. 30The Forest That Burns on Schedule
31. 31Lynx and Snowshoe Hares
32. 32The 2019 Swan Lake Fire
33. 33The Moose Range Reason
34. 34Peterson and Kelly Lakes
35. 35Egumen Wayside
36. 36Moose on the Road
37. 37Watson Lake and the Moose River
38. 38Bald Eagles of the Refuge
39. 39Skilak Loop Rejoins
40. 40Sterling's Two Rivers
41. 41The Town of Sterling
42. 42Swanson River Road and the Canoe Country
43. 43Scout Lake Loop and Morgan's Landing
44. 44Where Alaska's Oil Age Started
45. 45Robinson Loop and the Lowland Lakes
46. 46Soldotna: Hub of the Kenai
47. 47Birch Ridge: Golf in the Subarctic
48. 48Swiftwater and the Edge of Soldotna
49. 49The Kenai Spur: Road to Kenai City
50. 50Cook's Inlet, Bligh's Survey
51. 51Kenai's Old Russian Church
52. 52Soldotna Creek Park
53. 53Crossing the Kenai at Soldotna
54. 54The 97-Pound King
55. 55Funny River and Kalifornsky Beach
56. 56The Sonar That Counts Salmon
57. 57Kenai NWR Visitor Center
58. 58Kalifornsky: The Man Named California
59. 59The Funny River Fire of 2014
60. 60The Coastal Forest Opens
61. 61Cook Inlet's Oil Rigs
62. 62South Kalifornsky Beach Junction
63. 63Kasilof: First Russian Foothold
64. 64Kasilof River Crossing
65. 65Kasilof Village
66. 66Tustumena: The Big Lake You Can't See
67. 67Johnson Lake
68. 68Crooked Creek and the Smolt Factory
69. 69Razor Clams, While They Last
70. 70Clam Gulch and the Clams That Vanished
71. 71Clam Gulch Post Office
72. 72The Bluff-Top Pull-Outs
73. 73The Volcano Wall Appears
74. 74Scenic View RV Park
75. 75Mount Redoubt: The Engine Killer
76. 76Mount Iliamna: The Quiet Giant
77. 77Ninilchik River Campground
78. 78The Church on the Hill
79. 79Ninilchik River Bridge
80. 80Ninilchik View and the Volcano Panorama
81. 81Ninilchik: Russian Alaska, Still Living
82. 82Oil Well Road
83. 83Deep Creek and the Tractor Boats
84. 84The Old Believers Beyond the Road
85. 85Mount Augustine, The Island That Blows
86. 86The Iliamna Overlook
87. 87Happy Valley
88. 88Caribou Hills Backdrop
89. 89The Historical Marker at Mile 148
90. 90Stariski Creek
91. 91Stariski, Four Volcanoes at Once
92. 92Mount Spurr: Anchorage's Volcano
93. 93Eagles Over the Inlet
94. 94Anchor River State Rec Site
95. 95Anchor Point, the End of West
96. 96Crossing the Anchor River
97. 97Bald Eagles Toward Homer
98. 98The Road Bends Toward the Bay
99. 99Homer Pennock's Gold Bust
100. 100Baycrest Hill, The Reveal
101. 101Descending into Homer
102. 102Kachemak Bay's Roadless Far Shore
103. 103The Halibut Capital
104. 104The Pratt Museum
105. 105Beluga Lake Floatplanes
106. 106The Arts Colony at the End of the Road
107. 107Bishop's Beach and the Ocean Center
108. 108Across to Seldovia and Halibut Cove
109. 109The Homer Spit
110. 110The Spit's Working Harbor
111. 111The Salty Dawg Saloon
112. 112End of the Road, Homer Close
113. 113Leaving the End of the Road
114. 114One Last Halibut Note
115. 115One Last Look Down the Spit
116. 116Bald Eagles of Homer
117. 117Homer the Arts Colony
118. 118Bishop's Beach
119. 119Homer's Homestead Roots
120. 120Coal on the Beach
121. 121The Baycrest Climb
122. 122Baycrest Hill in the Mirror
123. 123Kachemak Bay's Roadless Wild
124. 124The Old Sterling Highway
125. 125Anchor River Recreation Loop
126. 126The Anchor River Steelhead
127. 127Anchor Point
128. 128Anchor Point Services
129. 129The Westernmost Anchor Story
130. 130Eagles and the Bluff
131. 131Stariski
132. 132Stariski Creek and the Caribou Hills
133. 133Reading the Volcanoes
134. 134The Aleutian Arc Begins
135. 135Happy Valley
136. 136The Iliamna Avalanches
137. 137Mount Augustine Behind You
138. 138Cook Inlet Tides
139. 139Deep Creek
140. 140Deep Creek's Halibut Numbers
141. 141The Kenai Peninsula Fair
142. 142Ninilchik - The Dialect That Survived
143. 143The Transfiguration Chapel
144. 144The Old Believers' Long Road
145. 145Redoubt
146. 146Clam Gulch State Rec Area
147. 147The Razor Clam Crash
148. 148Cohoe and the Ocean Beaches
149. 149Johnson Lake
150. 150Crooked Creek
151. 151Kasilof and Tustumena Northbound
152. 152Kisolof's First Foothold
153. 153Tusumena's Killer Winds
154. 154The Coast Gives Way
155. 155Soldotna Was Homestead Country
156. 156Kalifornsky
157. 157The Funny River Fire
158. 158The Salmon Sonar
159. 159The Kenai
160. 160Soldotna Creek Park
161. 161Soldotna - Last Services
162. 162Kenai City - The Detour Worth Taking
163. 163Cook, the Inlet, and the Mutiny Man
164. 164The Kenai's Oldest Church
165. 165Swiftwater Campground
166. 166Back Into Lake Country
167. 167The Canoe Country, Looking Back
168. 168Where the Oil Started, Looking Back
169. 169Sterling Town
170. 170Skilak Loop
171. 171Hidden Lake
172. 172Skilak Lake, the Settling Basin
173. 173Watson Lake and Two Kinds of Water
174. 174Fire Country
175. 175Peterson and Kelly Lakes
176. 176The Giant Kenai Moose
177. 177The Kenai River Returns
178. 178The Kenai Canyon
179. 179Combat Fishing
180. 180K'beq', Sqilantnu, and 6,000 Years
181. 181Russian River Falls
182. 182The Upper Kenai's Giant Trout
183. 183Cooper Landing
184. 184The Bypass That's Being Built
185. 185Kenai Lake One More Time
186. 186Crescent Creek and Cabins
187. 187Dall Sheep on the Climb
188. 188Quartz Creek Campground
189. 189Quartz Creek and Daves Creek
190. 190The Sterling Highway's Own Story
191. 191Tern Lake Day-Use, Almost There
192. 192Back to Tern Lake

Route map