Turnagain Arm has the second-highest tides in North America, and Beluga Point is the best seat for watching them work. The Seward Highway runs along the cliffs here, squeezed between the Chugach Mountains and a long, silvery fjord that empties and refills twice a day with a tidal range of about nine metres. At low water you look down onto grey glacial mudflats; a few hours later the sea comes back, sometimes as a tidal bore, a single low wave that runs up the inlet at walking speed. The best views of the bore come an hour or two after low tide in Anchorage, and the locals keep a tide table the way others keep a weather forecast.
The belugas the point is named for are real, though they come and go. These small white whales chase salmon and hooligan, a smelt-like fish, into the Arm in summer, and on a rising tide you may see pale backs rolling in the grey water. Bring binoculars and some patience, and be glad of the pull-out, because the shoulder is a poor place to stop. Do not wander out onto the mudflats. The silt is fine as flour and sets like cement around your legs, and people have died when the tide returned before they could be freed.
The road itself is a beauty. The Seward Highway is an All-American Road, with two lanes, long passing sections, and corners that follow the water in easy curves, so it is relaxed riding rather than a technical test. Further along, at Windy Corner, Dall sheep often graze on the roadside slopes, which causes traffic jams of cheerful tourists. Speed enforcement is steady here, and the weather can swing from sunshine to rain and chill within an hour, with wind funnelled down the Arm. Layers matter, even in July. Late June and July give nearly endless daylight, and September brings gold on the birches and fewer people.
Beluga Point is about twenty-seven kilometres south of Anchorage, with no services at the pull-out. Anchorage, a city of three hundred thousand, has everything, and Girdwood, a little over twenty-seven kilometres in the other direction, has fuel, food and the Alyeska ski resort. Fill up before leaving the city, then take your time. Captain Cook, who sailed into the Arm in 1778 hoping for the Northwest Passage, found only a dead end and had to turn again, hence the name Turnagain.