Alaska

In the summer of 2025, the Battle Goat family took a week long trip to Alaska. It was a bucket list item for 'Grandpa' to go halibut fishing in Alaska, so we did it. We flew into Anchorage, drove south to Cooper Landing, and navigated some fishing and sightseeing from that central point. We spent a lot of time in Seward, but also checked out Soldotna and Homer.

Cooper Landing:

We chose to stay in Cooper Landing because it was fairly central to a lot of the towns and sights we wanted to check out. There's really not much in Cooper Landing, other than a gas station/market, a brewery, and outfitters. Our favorite coffee stop was the Grizzly Ridge Convenience Store. They have plenty of food, snacks, ice cream, essentials, and so on, but the coffee was a group favorite. There are a ton of places to stay in and around Cooper Landing. We traveled with a large group, so opted to do an AirBnB which could fit all of us. Our AirBnB had some great views of the wilderness and mountains nearby. We spent most mornings and evenings with binoculars, checking out the goats along the mountaintops.

Cooper Landing Brewing Company

Our very last full day of the trip, we chose to do some early morning fishing. A few of us went to the Kenai River and the others tackled the Russian River. It was great being in Cooper Landing because we had really easy access to both rivers. Our group went to the Russian River, as we'd already fished in the Kenai down in Soldotna (more on that later). We were in Alaska during the Sockeye Salmon run and were hoping to luck out. The technique of 'flossing' was new to all of us but we ultimately got the hang of it and were able to hook some fish throughout the trip.

Where we were positioned in the Russian River had little to no fishermen, while our counterparts in the Kenai River were fighting for space. Those in the Kenai saw way more fish than we did but weren't able to get anything on the line due to the insane amount of people. However, fishing isn't always about whether or not fish are caught, the scenery was fantastic, as was the company. With that said, our group in the Russian River was able to get a few fish on the line.

Seward:

A lot of our points of interest involved Seward, so we took the hour long drive down the Seward Highway quite a few times. First, we chartered a deep sea fishing trip out of Seward that was incredibly successful. Everyone on board caught multiple fish, like halibut, lingcod, rockfish, and yellow-eye rockfish.

Out of Seward, we also did a wildlife cruise. While the animals were super cool (otters, sea lions, jellyfish, porpoise, puffins, etc...), we saw just as many on the fishing trip. The real benefit to doing the wildlife cruise was all the sightseeing. The ship took us through the harbor and around the coastline to see some awesome landscapes, a glacier, remote cabins, and rock formations. It was completely worth it. The kids had a blast counting jellyfish throughout the cruise, I think they hit 48.

While Seward is excellent for beautiful views, fishing charters, wildlife tours, restaurants, and tons of shopping, it is not somewhere we needed to spend multiple days. There is so much to see in Alaska, it's hard to justify spending so much time in a tourist town.

Exit Glacier:

Outside of Seward, was the walking trails to view Exit Glacier. I would identify the hike as easy. It was mostly flat and not terribly long. There were great viewpoints along the trail and it brought us to the "Outwash Area" where we were able to walk around and get some closer views of the glacier.

As we walked around and look in the views, we noticed people walking around on top of the glacier. We didn't have the time to look into something like that for our trip, so we'll add it to the list the next time we make it to Alaska.

Soldotna:

Soldotna was another town within about an hour of our rental. We went there two different times for fishing in the Kenai River. A group of us went out super early one morning, to stake a claim along the river and to be there before the sun rose. We took a small boat up to a 'sand bar' (for lack of a better identifier) and spent the morning there. We all caught our limit and headed back in.

On a separate day, our whole group headed into Soldotna. Right in town, they had some really cool areas along the river with narrow boardwalks and then stairways down into the river. There were a few people scattered along these stairwells but we were able to find a fairly private opening. We pulled on our hip-waders, plunged into the incredibly blue water, and got to work.

We were pretty successful in the Kenai River this trip too, and we didn't even spend too long of a time there, considering half of our group didn't have hip-waders and just watched. I think it's also pretty important to send a special shoutout to my son's $20 Ozark Trail retractable fishing pole that he used to catch a salmon. You can't make this crap up!

Homer:

I'll start by saying, our 2 hour trip to Homer was my wife's favorite part of the entire trip. We went out onto the Spit, which juts out into Kachemak Bay, and drove all the way to the end where there was some beachy area. We threw some poles into the water and did some wandering around.

Homer Spit has some boardwalk-esque shops all along it with souvenirs, drinks, food, apparel, tackle, and so on. We spent a lot of time wandering through all of the little shops. And we spent a lot of money on Alaska souvenirs and apparel.

There's something pretty cool about being simultaneously surrounded by water and mountains. The views were incredible and I'm informed (by my lovely wife) that when we return to Alaska, we'll be staying in Homer.

Besides fishing and sightseeing, while in Homer, we were on the hunt for some Alaskan oysters. We're big oyster fans but West Coast oysters are very far from being our favorite, honestly we just pass on oysters if West Coast are the only option, so we were curious to see if Alaskan oysters were similar.

Our group was pretty evenly split on the verdict of Alaskan oysters. Some felt they were too big and a bit chalky, while others thought they were delicious. Overall, they're far and away better than West Coast oysters and I won't be changing my opinion about that.

The Fish:

We caught a lot of fish. A. LOT. OF. FISH. So naturally, we had to try some while we were still there. We were advised, by many people, that we could flash freeze the salmon (to kill the bacteria) and then once thawed, we could eat it raw. We did just that. We ate some raw, as sashimi. We made some into ceviche, and we smoked some. Everything was delicious. It was super cool to be in Alaska, eating Alaskan salmon that we had just caught. 10/10 would recommend.

All in all, we caught about 100 lbs of fish. We had to get it home. Regardless of flying or driving, we couldn't really pack it all up to bring it home, so we opted to ship it home. There are plenty of companies that will work with you to freeze your fish and store it until you're ready to ship it home. We used a company in Soldotna and added our catches throughout the trip until we were ready to leave and then they processed, froze, and shipped it to our houses. It worked wonderfully and when it arrived at our houses (very quickly), it was all still frozen. A year later, we're still working through it.

We did see some people with similarly packaged fish checking the boxes before their flights, so that is obviously an option as well. Regardless of which option you choose, the amount of fish we caught + the shipping costs = less than what we'd have spent in a grocery store on fish. Totally worth it.

Conclusion:

Go to Alaska.

Go on hikes, spend time outdoors, and take a wildlife cruise. If you like to fish, do that too. We were there for 7 days and it was simply not enough time. We didn't want to leave and since returning, have daydreamed about when we can possibly make the trip back. We now completely understand the people who leave everything behind to move to Alaska. We get it, people!

If you happen to find yourself in Seward or Homer, look for those Battle Goat stickers.

If you'd like names of restaurants, the wildlife cruise, the fishing charter we took, our AirBnb, etc...send us a message and we'll get you that info.

Be the goat.