A beautiful state park with great mountain views.

Excellent state park. One of the best ever. We visited in late August and it was not too hot, and gorgeous. Lots of great hikes. Also great to just drive on the highway with the park on one side and the bay on the other.

This is a huge state park (495,000 acres) and we have only seen a few parts of it. Each of the areas we visited required a $5 fee per car and had a payment kiosk that would give you a receipt to display on your dashboard.One afternoon we spent 3.5 hours driving and stopping along the Seward Highway (see entry for Turnagain Arm Drive), and there were beautiful and interesting things to see at each stop. These stops that we visited are part of the state park:* McHugh Creek Day Use Area – Waterfall near parking lot; trails; overlook on hill above parking lot; pit toilets.* Bird Creek Trail Access – Bridge over creek and stairs to the creek banks where people fly fish; trails; pit toilets.* Bird Point (has its own Trip Advisor entry) – Statues of beluga whales in parking lot; walkway to overlooks; pit toilets.The next morning we spent 2.5 hours at the Glen Alps Trailhead which has upper and lower parking lots and pit toilets at the upper lot. We walked from the upper lot up to the Anchorage Overlook, where you can see the city below and both arms of Cook Inlet (spent 20 minutes on this).From there we took one of the Powerline Access trails and walked deep into the flowers and trees. When we got to the Powerline Trail we took a different Powerline Access trail to go back and ended up at the lower parking lot. We spent 45 minutes on these Powerline Access trails, but if you wanted to actually walk some of the Powerline Trail itself you could stay longer.Then it was back to the upper parking lot for a pit stop, then we headed up the Flattop Mountain Trail/Blueberry Loop Trail which begins from the upper lot on the right side of the road that leads to the lower lot and on the left side of the signage kiosk. After starting the trail, we took an immediate sharp turn to the right at the sign for Flattop Trail to go uphill. When we reached a set of wooden stairs we walked up them and continued uphill. When we reached an open spot with an expansive view of Anchorage and the Cook Inlet below, the trail continued to go uphill for a while until it flattened out as we began to loop around the hilltop. We passed the right turn that you would take if you wanted to continue to the top of Flattop Mountain, but we just wanted to do the loop back to the parking lot. This whole trail was full of amazing scenery, mountains all around. We spent a little over an hour on this hike. I recommend you take hiking poles.The Chugach State Park map on their website shows a lot of trailheads on the north side of Anchorage and someday I hope to return and explore some of those too.

Chugach State Park offers some of the best sightseeing in SouthCentral Alaska. Wildlife can be observed from the highways and state maintained trails within the park.

Anchorage was our home base upon our arrival in Alaska. There's TONS of things to do there. We drove to Matanuska Glacier to hike on it. Fantastic excursion. Guide was super knowledgeable and made it an interesting hike.