I spent 5 unexpected days in and around Anchorage Alaska this July. Our friend works there and, in a moment of weakness, offered to host us. We took him up on it — with two New York friends we’d never traveled with before. It turned out beautifully.

Sibi and I spent the first twenty minutes of our trip to Alaska Google-Searching and ChatGPT-ing our plans in Anchorage’s airport. While we were both looking intensely at our phones, a stranger at the airport walked up to us and asked, “Hey, everything okay here? Do you need help with something?”

Out of pure reflex, I said, ‘No no, we’re okay,’ and shooed away who I assumed was a limo-driving scammer. It only occurred to me after he’d walked away that he might not have been a scammer. I filed this to the back of my mind.

Sibi and I embarked on our first adventure of the trip: biking the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, a 11 mile one-way ride along the ocean to Kincaid Park, and a 14 mile return through the city, riding next to a water-plane landing zone, a commercial cargo flight landing zone, and the city’s biggest park and most beautiful biking trail. The shopkeeper at the rental store cared deeply for his customers and took his time fitting us with our bikes. Perhaps he took too much time. He moved with zero urgency — explaining the route, showing us every bike (twice), and even oiling Sibi’s chain. Forty-five minutes later, we pedaled away. We also met another family of bike renters who were visiting from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. I mentioned I didn’t know where that was, and the couple’s elder daughter, probably 14 or 15 years old, showed me a map of Anchorage on the walls of the store, walked about 4 meters away from it in a roughly South Eastern direction, pointed at her foot and said, “Well, if that’s Anchorage, we’re here”. She was almost outside the store. Her father explained to us that they had flown here, but there were also ferries that could bring them to Anchorage, “Ferries take about 3 days to get here, and they make stops along Alaska. They’re not that frequent though”, and I’d said, “Ah got it”, “Yeah, they only ferry 3 times a year”. I had not gotten it.

We started out biking ride at 7:30 PM, and it was bright outside. As soon as we started, two girls on bikes on the street called out to us a hello. “Hey fellow-bikers!” It left me startled, “Why are they making fun of us?!” I nodded to them an awkward hello, and was two streets away before realizing they might have just been trying to be nice.

Tony Knowles Coastal Trail was not my first pick for a bike trail. I’d wanted to bike the entire Moose Trail, a 33 Mile loop which includes the coastal trail and runs through the city. Sibi had wanted an easier ride, and he had it imprinted in his brain that the coastal trail was only 11 miles long. It was 25 miles long for the round trip, a fact I repeated through the onwards ride, that he chose to disbelieve the entire way. At 5 miles, we made a stop near the commercial cargo-airplane landing strip and marveled at flights flying right above our heads, taking dozens of videos and photos aiming for the perfect shot. “We’re half-way there, right?” he said. “Halfway to the halfway point,” I said. He shook his head in denial.

The trail was the prettiest trail I’ve ridden on so far: it was tree lined, open to the ocean, with no smells from smoked cigarettes or marijuana. We could smell the salty, sunny air, feel the 20 degree Celsius breeze, ride on a well-paved bike path with only other bikers and the occasional pedestrian for company. Sibi and I marveled at the number of friends and families we saw walking along the path, “Do they just walk, chatting for 11 miles?” he asked.

The last onward mile was the hardest! It was a steep 180 m ascent, and I had to drop to the lowest gear and humbly huff and puff my way to the top of the hill to the mid-point of the ride. At this point it had finally dawned on Sibi that we were halfway through, but he refused to be realistic about the time it would take us to get back. We’d gotten here in an hour and a half. Our friend called, asking about dinner plans, and I realized that I’d completely lost track of time because of the bright sun upon us. Our way back was through winding city roads, and left us frequently confused and lost, requiring us to interpret two paper maps with our shopkeeper’s helpful squiggles and scribbles. We got back to the bike-store at 10:15 PM. The sun was bright as day outside.

The next morning we had an early start, driving our way to Seward, a town over a 100 miles away for a Fjords cruise. Sibi drove the entire way, and I picked music. It worked against both of our comfort zones.

About 30 minutes away from Seward, highway traffic ground to a stop. A minute of inching later we saw why. There was a tall, black dog running alongside and against cars on the highway. My first thought was wondering if this is usual in Alaska, but the dog looked pretty clueless on how to behave which made me think it wasn’t expected. I snapped a picture of the dog on the street and posted it on Reddit. “Collared dog running alongside State Highway 9” I’d said as the title. Ten minutes later, four comments arrived with the same message: ‘No one calls it that. It’s Seward Highway’. I updated the title, choosing to appease the angry Redditors. We checked into our day long cruise and made our way aboard, losing internet service along the way.

We spent the next 7 hours at sea, watching whales feed, otters play, puffins dive, and glaciers calve. None of these were actions I’d expected to see, ever. Many many photos and incredible views later, we made it back to land.

I opened Reddit on our way back, and delighted! One kind Redditor had responded, “No this is not normal. I called Alaskan Highway Patrol and posted this on Facebook Alaskan Lost Pets group. Will share if we find an update”, and sometime later, “edit: Dog has been reunited with the owner”. I felt silently proud, while Sibi declared this as our best internet moment. (Reddit Link here if you’re a comments-reader)

Another 100 miles of driving later, Sibi returned the car to rental with blood-shot eyes (from concentrating on his driving – he’d driven the whole way in perfect upright posture, 10 and 2 hands on the steering, and had seemingly not blinked enough).

Oh! Prior to all this, that morning before we left for our day of driving, Sibi dropped his phone and the screen stopped working. This is the third time he’s broken his phone on a trip, and this was probably the best circumstance to break his phone, to be fair. The first time was in Hawaii where he dropped his phone onto a Caldera, a high density rock that shattered his screen into a million pieces like a modern sculpture, and the second time was in Zion national park, where after a day of hiking and taking hundreds of photos, Sibi dropped his phone into the Narrows and lost it forever. So all things considered, innocently dropping his phone from the couch onto the floor of our Airbnb was laughably easy to resolve. We stopped at Bestbuy on our way to brunch the next day and picked up a new phone. He was set up by mid-day. The folks at Bestbuy were sluggish – we asked for a Pixel 9A and the store-assistant unapologetically said, “Ah don’t worry, someone will be with you in 10 minutes to show you the phone”.

Brunch was a similar, slow affair. We finally met up with our friends Sandy and Prad at brunch. It was their turn to be confused by Alaskan hospitality and small-talk. One of the customers at a neighboring table at brunch remarked multiple times at our spread. “I wish I’d gotten fruits like they have! That looks so nice!” she said, on two occasions. Sandy smilingly responded in Tamil, “Wow, it seems like she’d just eat with us if given a chance”. We laughed – it was exactly how we’d felt the last two days! We were glad to have more New Yorker energy in Anchorage – ever-rushed, and usually impolite.

We drove to Matanuska Glacier for a walk through the ice with two guides. The drive was long, and rainy. When we got off at Matanuska it was bitterly cold, and we donned all of our minimal winter-clothes we’d brought with us. One of the guides snapped at us for not having checked the weather before arriving – none of us even had rain-jackets. On the walk they were nicer, and the Glacier walk felt other-worldly: we were in the middle of ice in every direction, walking with crampons and ice boots in the middle of Alaska. Three days ago we’d been in the hustle of summer in midtown NYC.

Two hours of walking around left us happy and content, and we made our way back to the new Airbnb in Wasilla that our friend and Alaskan resident, Sathvik (who we were yet to meet on the trip) had booked. It was a beautiful lake-facing property that the sun shone through even at the 8 PM we checked-in at.

The next day, we drove up to Denali State Park in a crowded Compact-SUV packed with 5 grown adults. We spoke about bears the entire way to Denali State Park, Prad and Sibi vowed to move to Alaska together, and Sandy made some well-meaning comments that we reacted to with shock and defined as hot-takes. Good ol’ road trip vibes! The hike we’d painstakingly picked turned out to be a perfect 7 mile hike up a hill to Curry Ridge with incredible views of Mount Denali and surrounding areas on a picture-perfect day. Along the hike, we clapped, yelled “Hi Bear”, and had a bear-bell ringing the entire time. No one would have been in any doubt that we were not local Alaskans.

A beautiful hike and a 160 dollars in cooking supplies and groceries later, we were home, showered, and prepping dinner together. Multiple people at Target had commented on our 160 dollars of supplies that I felt the need to call it out here. We ate most of it, and I packed up the rest of it back to NYC, primarily out of guilt.

Barbecue was utterly perfect: all of the meat patties, Alaskan salmon, vegetables, mushrooms, and faux-meat patties for us vegetarians turned out to be delicious, and we settled into a game of Poker to end the night. Sandy was the big winner, taking home an additional $10 that the other 4 of us combined had lost.

On Sunday we headed to a Disc-Golf course in Kincaid Park. There was something to the competitiveness it lent to the otherwise regular hiking day that we thrilled in, and the leisurely pace under a cool sun and beautiful winds made the day feel pretty-perfect. We headed back to Moose’s Tooth for lunch, ordered too much food, and made our half-hearted way to the airport for our overnight flights back to NYC.

We bid Alaska our goodbye with our promises to return in the winter, and play more disc-golf in New York. All in all, a pretty amazing trip.