With no roads in Kobuk Valley National Park or even within hundreds of miles of it, the prefered way of exploring it is by paddling the Kobuk River, wide and placid. Lanchi and I flew from Kotzebue, the largest eskimo community in Alaska, to the small eskimo village of Ambler with our inflatable canoe, and then took off from the eskimo village of Kiana, about a hundred miles downriver. See also the scenic pictures of Kobuk Valley National Park.