Eklutna Lake | Chugach State Park

Digging back into some Alaska posts once again. I’ve felt a little lazy in processing photos these days but I’ll see if I can make more progress on them this weekend!

For now, we’re going to pick up from where we left off at Thunderbird Falls and drive around the bend to Chugach State Park and Eklutna Lake. Let’s pretend that I did not, a million times over, keep trying to call this lake Elktuna Lake.

Eklutna Lake Road is a gently winding road leading into the depths of Chugach State Park. There are several other entrances to reach this expansive state park but this would be really the deepest we would trek this trip. We had a little more time to kill before meeting our friend Eliana in Anchorage for dinner and errands but not enough time for a long hike into the woods.

Instead we drove past the campground and to a day use lot where we paid the appropriate fee and walked over to the lakeshore to explore a bit.

Prickly Wild Rose, Rosa acicularis

Squashberry, Viburnum edule

While it had felt a bit warmer on our hike at Thunderbird Falls, the wind ripping off the lake changed all that and I was glad to have brought a few layers out from the car.

Piles of driftwood and rocks provided an ample exploring ground for Forest.

I mostly took in all of the colors of autumn while I also wished I had the time to climb the mountains and go exploring.

We followed the shoreline a bit until we came to a series of tipis, or the bones of tipi. I’m unsure if they were just built by random visitors or the park built them but they were attracting the attention of all of the guests and any kids involved, Forest included.

Our short visit wasn’t enough but it had to satisfy us for this trip. I imagine the campground would be a spectacular place to hang out for a week or two in the summer, using it as a base camp for hikes into the interior of the park.