Visited: Friday, June 30, 2023
If getting there is half of the fun, it's also half of the hassle. We started yesterday with the discovery that our first flight of the day had been cancelled - and the alternatives on offer involved a delay of at least two days. So we booked a flight to San Francisco, figuring it puts us _much_ closer, and that we might wiggle on to a flight. In the end we did; we arrived in Anchorage around 11:30, and got to our hotel just over 24 hours after waking up. Normally this would call for sleeping in, but we had a flight to Kotzebue this morning, getting us north of the Arctic Circle for the first time. And after a quick bite of lunch, we were walking to the NPS visitor center here in town when time came for our trip to Kobuk. And, on the way back, we picked up passengers in Kiana, a town with fewer people than I've attended gaming conventions with. It reminded me, truth be told, of picking up the passenger in Ab die Post.
But the destination - Kobuk is absolutely nothing like what I think of when I think of Alaska. It's - a sand dune. Surrounded by trees and water and mountains and glaciers - there's even a glacier _in_ the sand dune - and it feels like it was dropped there by accident. The flight there was beautiful, there was no one else at the sand dunes when we were there (Kobuk is one of the least visited national parks - you really have to want to get here to make it), and it was worth the visit.
