Kenai Fjords National Park - Seward, Alaska

Visiting Kenai Fjords National Park

Fjords are natural wonders in their own right, formed by glacial action in mountainous areas near coastlines. Most people think they will have to travel to Norway to see them up close, but at Kenai Fjords National Park visitors can take boat rides, drive or hike along the edge of active glaciers and view many fjords and inlets.

The beauty of the area was created, and is still being formed, by raw natural forces. These include the sea, glaciers, earthquakes and the changing landscape. Visitors can witness for themselves the effects of an ice age upon an environment and the plants and animals that inhabit it.

The park is one of only three Alaskan national parks that can be reached by a road, and visitors are able to drive almost to the foot a glacier that is part of the famous Harding Ice Field. Receiving over four hundred inches of snow each year the ice field produces several glaciers and one of the most popular spots to visit at Kenai Fjords National Park is the “Exit Glacier” produced by the activity of the ice field.

Exit Glacier is called a “drive up” glacier because of its easy accessibility to visitors and hikers, and for this reason it receives the most visits from the park’s annual quarter of a million guests, but it is not the largest glacier born from the Harding Ice Field.

The nearby town of Seward, Alaska is another place where guests can begin an exploration of the Kenai Fjords National Park. Here they can choose among several boat tours that will allow them to view the fjords, wildlife such as whales and seals, and ice caps and glaciers along Resurrection Bay. There are also many chartered flight opportunities for taking in the Kenai Fjords National Park from the air. In this way some of the inland views that are unreachable by land transportation can be enjoyed.

There are many creatures that call the park their home including the Hoary Marmot (the largest of the ground squirrel species), three kinds of Orca whales, and dozens of varieties of birds (including some that are flightless), sea lions, otters and bears. Many of these majestic animals can be seen by sharp-eyed visitors without the aid of special equipment or binoculars.

A trip to Kenai Fjords National Park is like a trip back in time, where the land is still being transformed by the most powerful and uncontrollable forces of nature.