Girdwood, Alaska is a fun little town with a population of about 2,000. The area is also home to quite a bit of wildlife. We saw a mother moose and her twins in town as we left for a hike one morning. Additionally there are bears, dall sheep, mountain goats and lots of birds in the region.
Mother moose and her twins in Girdwood
Moose twins
Located 40 miles south of Anchorage, it is billed as “where Alaska comes to play”. The Alyeska Ski Resort is located here. There are several restaurants, a mercantile with a reasonable stock of groceries, other shopping and lodging. In the summer the Alyeska Ski Resort allows RV’s to camp in the Day Lodge Parking Lot for just $10/night, with no hook-ups/services.
From Girdwood you can explore Turnagain Arm and Portage Valley. It’s a short 11 miles to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. There’s the popular paved biking trails along the Alyeska Highway and the Gird to Bird scenic ride along Turnagain Arm.
Plenty of spectacular views in the Girdwood area
There is tons of hiking in the area. Most of the ski runs are open for hiking as well as the neighboring trails in Chugach State Park and Chugach National Forest, who has an information/ranger station on Alyeska Highway. We hiked on the Winner Creek Gorge Trail and the Upper Winner Creek Trail. On an afternoon that Karla was not feeling well, Mike also checked out the Iditarod National Historic Trail. He said it was similar to the Winner Creek Trails, i.e. wooded.
Our favorite restaurant in Girdwood was Chair 5.
FOOD: We had a lunch at Coast Pizzeria which offers pizza slices that are each about 1/4 of a large pizza. The pizza was ok but not exciting. There is also a Subway, Alpine Bakery, and The Ice Cream Shop in the same shopping center. In town, we had a better lunch at Chair 5, where Karla ordered a rib-eye philly cheesesteak and Mike had a pork bbq sandwich. Both were pretty good, but expensive at $15 each for the sandwiches. We saw other tables having a square deep dish pizza that looked tasty, so we went back and ordered one for dinner the next evening. It was our favorite meal in Girdwood and only $23 with enough food for both of us. There are some restaurants in the Alyeska Hotel and a very nice restaurant at the top of the tramway, Seven Glaciers” at the hotel which we did not get to check out. There are also several places to get your coffee fix. Many of the town restaurants were not open for lunch.
