The project has the enthusiastic backing of Governor Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate. The problem is that the road would slice through the federally protected Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, imperiling rich concentrations of bird and animal life. By all accounts, the hovercraft service on which King Cove's 800 or so residents rely to reach Cold Bay has met every evacuation need since it began last year. The road would connect the remote fishing hamlet of King Cove on the Alaskan peninsula to an airport 25 miles away in the village of Cold Bay. American taxpayers should not spend a dime on this project and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, should make sure that they don't have to. Now comes the Izembek road - the Road to Nowhere - another boondoggle and a surefire environmental disaster. You can see more of Lisa’s writing at or catch up with her latest adventures at and there was Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere, a pork-barrel project that eventually succumbed to public derision. She is also the author of 50 Hikes Around Anchorage and a second guidebook tentatively titled Day Hiking Southcentral Alaska. She makes her living as a freelance writer, focused primarily on travel, the outdoors, and profiling the unique personalities that call Alaska home. Even though she lives in “the big city,” Lisa thrives on the self-sufficient mentality that drives the rest of the state forward. Lisa Maloney has lived in Anchorage, Alaska since the late 1980s, and travels extensively throughout the state for work and play. Along the way, you’ll see plenty of beautiful scenery, of course, but this sort of drive is more for the pleasure-and pride-of saying you’ve done it. For real road-trip cred, make this an enormous loop by driving south to Whitehorse and then coming back on the Alcan Highway, for a total loop distance of about 900 miles or 20 hours of driving. Open seasonally, the Top of the World Highway runs 185 miles (about a six-hour drive) north from Tok and east into Canada’s Dawson City. It takes about six hours to get there from either Fairbanks or Anchorage, and while the first couple hundred miles are pretty, it’s the last 26-mile drive through Thompson Pass and Keystone Canyon-which helps earn Valdez its nickname as “land of the waterfalls”-that will really take your breath away. The drive to Valdez is arguably the most beautiful. The inland drive from Anchorage to Hatcher Pass does take you through some pretty scenery, but it’s the last 15 miles, which follow the winding, tree-lined Little Susitna River before bursting into the tundra where you can see for miles, that are really the most beautiful. The drive from Anchorage to Seward snakes along the coastline before ascending Turnagain Pass and eventually winding back to sea level around a series of beautiful-and enormous-alpine lakes. The only thing better than taking these beautiful drives once is taking them twice. That means you’ll have to retrace your route on the return trip, but that’s hardly a problem. And often, the destination at the end of the road is every bit as interesting as the journey it took to get there. Each of the following road trip ideas showcases Alaska’s natural beauty. Alaska doesn’t have many roads, but what it lacks in quantity is made up for in quality.
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