My favorite place in the world: Ft. Abercrombie State Park

This trail leads to an overlook that is my favorite part of the park

While I’ve traveled quite a bit around the world, there is one place that will always have my heart — Ft. Abercrombie State Park on Kodiak Island, Alaska. I remember hiking the trails as a Girl Scout, hanging out on top of the bunkers as a teenager, spending hours partying (and legitimately exploring!) as a young adult and even now, all grown up, I can feel its pull.

The park is where I spent an incredible amount of time between the ages of 13 and 21. My friends and I had several favorite campsites that we would spend weekends at — when we were younger, we’d all pile into a tent to gossip the night away. As we got older, the group grew and the nights often ended with a mix of couples huddled around a campfire, drinking beer and talking about life after high school. Most of my best memories of my friends involve Ft. Abercrombie.

But besides the fact that it was a great places to escape, the park is also crazy beautiful and loaded with history.

Let’s start with the history part so the pictures of bunkers and cannons at least make sense. Ft. Abercrombie is home to many structures left over from WWII, including several cannons, tons of bunkers and a few generator houses.

Half of the fun of walking around the park is discovering the bunkers. After having been gone for so long, I loved the fact that I could still mentally picture where each bunker was. Some things never you leave you I guess.

Distant Electrical Control bunker at Piedmont Point — I love getting on the roof or inside this one!

Cannon at Miller Point

Cracked cannon at Miller Point

During camping trips, I remember laying on my back on this bunker looking for shooting stars.

This ammunition bunker on Miller Point is now a WWII museum and is so new I had no idea it existed. We took a trip through it and saw some pretty cool stuff, including a WWII jeep, military uniforms and old (working!) radios.

Missiles and ammunition from WWII

After we got a dose of education, we moved on to the scenery. I love this park so much I actually went here twice in the 2.5 days I was in Kodiak. The first day was sunshine and blue skies and the second day was much more normal — lots of fog and sprinkles of rain.

I could post hundreds of pictures but unless you’ve been to Ft. Abercrombie, they would still fall short of conveying its awesomeness. Part of that comes from standing on a bluff, hearing the waves crash, spotting an eagle soaring by and smelling the sea salt in the air.

Trust me, there is nothing better than this.

Even when it’s overcast, this place is my happy place.