A few miles uphill from Skagway, the northern corner of Southeast Alaska, water does something a little strange. The open ocean is hardly a blink to the south, less than 15 miles (24 km) away. If the water headed downhill first thing in the morning—down the White Pass, where gold miners once slogged, carrying their ton of goods, past the Gold Rush cemetery, where the journey ended for a few—and along the edge of the town itself, harbor seals would be splashing in its puddles by lunchtime.

But the Yukon River has other ideas. Gathering itself from glacial melt and streams running off scree-covered slopes—nobody has ever been able to pinpoint the river’s original source—the Yukon gains force as it moves north, picking up countless tributaries as it cuts an arc through Canada’s Yukon Territory and Alaska. The river passes the gold fields, the Arctic, Alaska’s heartland and the Bush, before finally emptying into salt water at the Bering Sea, 1,979 miles (3,185 km) from where it began almost within sight of Skagway’s cruise-ship docks.

Maybe the river wanted to take a vacation and see all of the North, instead of just taking the quick way home. And who can blame it? Everyone wants to see the North, the world’s ultimate dream destination. They’re drawn by its size. Place a map of Alaska across a map of the United States, and see how the Aleutians touch California, Southeast Alaska is almost in Florida, and Barrow is in North Dakota. They’re drawn by its scale—Alaska has 17 of the 20 highest mountains in the United States. Or they’re drawn by the wildlife—bears in Kodiak that can hit 1,200 pounds (545 kg), herds of caribou that can stretch for miles in the Yukon and may be tripping over gold nuggets left from the Klondike rush.

Or they come for the simple fact that within 15 minutes of almost any town, it’s possible to be in a place that has never seen a human footprint.

Really, it’s no wonder the Yukon rises at the edge of Southeast Alaska, the state’s panhandle. Here, water is more important than land, and distance is measured in how long it takes to get somewhere in a boat. Southeast holds Glacier Bay, Misty Fjords, the Tongass National Forest, and also Alaska’s governmental center, Juneau, usually considered America’s most inconvenient state capital. But, really, if you made the laws, wouldn’t you want to do it in a place where 1,000-foot (300-meter) waterfalls dropped out of cloud-covered mountains, and where the nearest whale sighting was a few minutes away?

Southeast isn’t the only place to see whales, though. Consider the Greater Anchorage region, home to nearly half the state’s population. Anchorage is in the center of the state and the center of the action, with all the shopping, culture and art attractions you’d expect from a big city. But a 20-minute drive along road lined with Watch for Moose signs takes travelers from downtown to Beluga Point, where beluga whales splash in Turnagain Arm.

On weekends, Alaska’s only traffic jam is on the highway leading south from Anchorage, as people flock to the Kenai Peninsula. On the eastern side of the peninsula is Seward and Resurrection Bay, where a traveler can see a couple dozen glaciers in a day, killing time between whale and seal sightings. The west side of the peninsula, with views of snow-capped volcanoes across Kachemak Bay, offers some of the state’s best birding and the town of Homer, where radio star Tom Bodett got famous for living at the end of the road, and pop singer Jewel got started, living in a van.

The highway north from Anchorage sweeps through the Matanuska Valley, full of farms with 60-pound (27-kg) cabbages, then passes the edge of Denali National Park, where the tallest mountain on the continent makes a false horizon, and finally enters Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest city. Home to the main campus of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks has a sophisticated air, at least by northern standards, the kind of cosmopolitanism that allows for late night cocktails under a summer sky that never quite bothers to get fully dark. Fairbanks may have the widest temperature range of any major city in North America: summer days can hit 90 degrees F (32 C), and winter is no stranger to 60 below (-51 C).

The Bush is the great untamed heart of the North: endless territory, where small towns are dwarfed by the vast open space. But the Bush isn’t one huge, undifferentiated landscape. The Richardson Mountains, the Ogilvies and the Brooks Range are ramparts at the Arctic Circle. Forests so thick, moose have to turn sideways to get their antlers between trees, cover chunks of land the size of New England. Along the coast, wild storms ruffle musk-ox fur, and the richest fishing fleet in the United States pulls out of the Aleutian Islands.

The Bush isn’t only in Alaska; it spreads into Canada as well, into the Yukon Territory, home of the Klondike gold rush. From Kluane National Park to the west, part of the largest protected wilderness in the world, to the arctic regions opened by the Dempster Highway—Canada’s northernmost road—the territory is pure scenic overload. And when it’s time for a little civilization, Whitehorse, Dawson City and even surprising Mayo make the most jaded traveler start thinking about vacation homes.

No matter how illogical it seems, the Yukon River knew what it was doing when it took that indirect, looping route through the North. This is not a landscape to hurry through: it’s a place to linger. Inspired travelers always take the long way home.