4 Best Sights in The Bush, Alaska

The Porcupine caribou herd, with nearly 200,000 animals, migrates through Alaska's Arctic and Canada's adjacent Vuntut and Ivvavik National Parks, flowing like a river of animals across the expansive coastal plain, through U-shape valleys and alpine meadows, and over high mountain passes. These migration routes demonstrate the interconnected nature of the region's lands and waters, and how arbitrary human boundaries seem.

South of the Kobuk River, the Great Kobuk (the largest active, high-altitude dune field on Earth), Little Kobuk, and Hunt River Sand Dunes—stabilized by small trees, shrubs, and the lichen that's typical of the tundra—cover much of the southern Kobuk Valley. They formed when glaciers slowly pulverized mountain rock into sand that washed into the valley during the last ice age. Of note, a flowering herb called the Kobuk locoweed is only found on the slopes of the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes. Most outfitters and air taxis that operate in the Arctic will take visitors to the sand dunes.

If you're hiking the wildflower-carpeted tundra around Kotzebue, you are entering a living museum dedicated to permafrost, the permanently frozen ground that lies just a few inches below the spongy tundra. Even Kotzebue's 6,000-foot airport runway is built on permafrost—with an insulating layer between the frozen ground and the airfield surface to ensure that landings are smooth. These days, thawing permafrost can cause problems for communities like Kotzebue: as the ice that binds frozen ground melts due to warm temperatures, the ground collapses and splits, damaging buildings, roads, and other infrastructure.

This dramatically sculpted landscape demonstrates the power of volcanic eruptions and their effect on geology, flora, and fauna. The impact of the Novarupta eruption on the park's ecosystems can be both obvious and subtle, so it's helpful to have a guide. The park concessionaire offers a tour ($96, including lunch) that departs from Brooks Camp on a 46-mile (round-trip) bus ride to the valley, with an optional 3.4-mile hike to the valley floor and back. This is also the bus to take for multiday backpacking trips up the valley to Mt. Katmai or the foot of Novarupta itself.