6 Best Sights in The Kenai Peninsula and Southcentral Alaska, Alaska

The center is a 144-acre, 2-mile drive-through loop with places where you can see up close the many animals the park has adopted and rescued. For more than a decade the center has been raising wood bison, which had been extinct in Alaska since the 1800s and were endangered in Canada. In 2015, the center reintroduced 100 wood bison to the wild, 340 miles west of Anchorage; a small herd remains at the center. Visitors can see moose, elk, eagles, musk ox, porcupines, and the elusive lynx. An elevated walkway at the center also allows visitors the thrilling experience of seeing bears at eye level.

The mountains surrounding Portage Glacier are covered with smaller glaciers. A 1-mile hike off Byron Glacier Road—the trail begins about a mile south of Begich-Boggs Visitor Center—leads to the Byron Glacier overlook. The glacier is notable for its accessibility—this is one of the few places where you can hike onto a glacier from the road system. In summer, naturalists lead free weekly treks in search of microscopic ice worms.

A popular place where for almost 40 years Alaskans have had their game processed, Indian Valley Meats has a shop that sells smoked salmon and reindeer, along with buffalo sausage made on the premises. The folks here will smoke, can, and package any fish you've caught, and they'll arrange for shipping.

The 1964 earthquake destroyed the town of Portage. The ghost forest of dead spruce in the area was created when the land subsided by 6 to 10 feet after the quake and saltwater penetrated inland from Turnagain Arm, killing the trees.

The glacier is one of Alaska's most frequently visited tourist destinations. A 6-mile side road off the Seward Highway leads to Begich-Boggs Visitor Center on the shore of Portage Lake, named after two U.S. congressmen who disappeared on a small-plane journey out of Anchorage in 1972. The center is staffed by Forest Service personnel, who can help plan your trip and explain the natural history of the area. A film on glaciers is shown hourly, and icebergs sometimes drift down to the center from Portage Glacier. Due to global climate change, Portage, like most of the glaciers in Alaska, has receded from view in recent years.

Several hiking trails are accessible from the Seward Highway, including the steep paths up Falls Creek and Bird Ridge. Both offer spectacular views of Turnagain Arm, where explorer Captain Cook searched for the Northwest Passage. The arm has impressive tides, and notably, the second-largest bore tide in North America. These bore tides can reach up to 40 feet, and move at an impressive 30 miles per hour (an average tide flows at 10 to 15 miles per hour). An increasingly popular, yet somewhat dangerous, sport is windsurfing the tidal bore. To view the bore tide, station yourself at one of the turnoffs along the arm about 2½ hours after low tide in Anchorage.

During the summer, beluga whales are frequent visitors to the arm as they patrol the muddy waters in search of salmon and hooligan, a variety of smelt. During high tide from July to August, when the surface of the water is calm, belugas are often spotted from the highway, frequently causing traffic jams as tourists and residents pull off the road for a chance to take in this increasingly rare sight. For reasons that are still unclear to scientists, Southcentral's beluga population has declined from 1,300 in 1980 to fewer than 290 today; they are currently listed as critically endangered, making a sighting of them even more exciting.