July 4th Kenai Peninsula
 

Reading to plan a July 2-11 trip and came across a description of Seward being THE place to be on July 4th. Also read online that the town swells from 2,500 - 40,000 (?!?) Has anyone been in either Seward or Homer for the 4th? It seems like it could be a nightmare, but I have never been to Alaska and my vision of this may not be correct.

(I am thinking Provincetown or any small town on a major holiday - everything packed and it being way too chaotic to be worth it!)

July 4th is the date of the Mt Marathon Race. Yes, Seward will be very crowded, but I doubt the locals consider it "a nightmare".

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Vic's travels: http://my.flightmemory.com/vogilvie

We have been in the town of Kenai for 4th of July. They have a really great parade and some other festivities so maybe they draw off some of the crowd. After the parade, the streets cleared. It looks like Homer plans a big celebration, too. Looks like fun to me. Head to which ever town is having the best activities. You could do an alternate activity like hiking but you probably need to make lodging reservations ASAP.

We stayed there July 3, 2008. No problem at all.

Great. Thanks all. It sounds like a great time to be there, but sometimes heading for popular festivals can be not as much fun as it should be because everything is just too crowded! (Speaking as someone who has learned to travel a little off season for ease of navigating!)

We will also be in the area that weekend, but we are planning to head out of Seward towards Homer to avoid the crowds. Will traffic be horrible on the peninsula that weekend? Enough so that we should try to travel to Homer before July 3?
Thanks. I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this thread.

mstraveler, I just learned from our innkeeper at Homer that they are expecting over a thousand motorcyle racers to camp on Homer spit that weekend for the big race July 4. Yikes!

Thanks ccubac. Appreciate the heads up! After a lot of time researching all of this I am thinking of taking an organized camping trip where someone else will organize the travel, camping, food etc. So I would end up on Seward on July 5 or 6. But, hey, since I am not driving or trying to find a hotel reservation it could be a great time to be there! It is my first trip to Alaska and having a relaxed vacation sounds good to me.

Just a quick note: we were there one 4th of July and the fireworks were shown just after midnight on the 4th (ie, right after it stopped being the 3rd and became the 4th.)

In retrospect this made sense - it stays light so late that if they waited until the end of the 4th to show them it'd really be the 5th.

Just be real clear on when the fireworks are going to be shown if you want to see them :)