Lake Clark

Richard Proenneke, a former Iowan, arrived at Twin Lakes in 1968 and lived there mostly alone for the next thirty years, building his own cabin by hand with hand tools and documenting his daily life on film. That footage became the 2003 documentary Alone in the Wilderness, and his cabin, now on the National Register of Historic Places, remains open to the public each summer inside a park that otherwise has no roads, no towns beyond a handful of tiny communities, and roughly seven miles of maintained trail in over four million acres.

Port Alsworth, on the shore of Lake Clark itself, is the only meaningfully developed place in the park, reachable exclusively by small aircraft since no road reaches it at all. From there, most visitors either hike the modest trail network to Tanalian Falls and Kontrashibuna Lake, or book a floatplane trip to Chinitna Bay or Silver Salmon Creek, where brown bears gather each summer to graze on sedges and dig for clams in the tidal flats.

Come for the bears and the volcanoes, since two, Redoubt and Iliamna, sit right inside the park. Stay long enough to visit Proenneke's cabin and understand why he chose to stay here for three decades. Read the story, book your air taxi well ahead, and when you leave, mark it visited.