Anywhere Alaska Flies
 

I have a free ticket on Alaska to anywhere they fly. We are based in SAT, so Mexico and Hawaii are not that exciting to us.

I also get a stopover in ANC, so I can do Homer etc. What other city that is served by AS would be worth a quick visit to?

Nome?
Adak?
Dutch Harbor?

I am just looking for something cool to add...

Thanks for the help

On Alaska you will have to fly to Seattle and then connect to Anchorage on to the other places.

Other option from Seattle you could connect to Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka, or Fairbanks....the other optiona are in Canada (Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, Calgary, or Edmonton)

A fre ticket like this isnt something you should use just to blow a weekend.

The other issue---when does it expire and when are you looking to travel.

If you want to go to Alaska I would say either look for next month or hold off till next summer.

Also you need to consider---Alaska is only a single flight back and forth per day...if there is any delay on the fflight in will apply to the flight back..thus missed connections.

As the above poster alluded to, there are a lot of unanswered questions. One of the biggest ones is "What are you interested in?"

How long do you have? Who is "we?" If "we" includes kids, ages? What are the other travelers interested in? How long do you have to travel?

I too wonder about the effectiveness of a "quick visit" since there is so much to do/see and much of a short trip is taken up with travel time.

You can't "do Homer" since Alaska Air doesn't fly there. But I would not write off traveling in the off-season or shoulder season. In fact, I could easily make a case for early March being an excellent time to visit Fairbanks and/or Anchorage. So much to do that time of year, though it is full fledged winter and requires winter clothing.

If you have a limited amount of time you have to decide where to spend it and what your interests are. Scenery? Glaciers? Wildlife? Hiking? Culture? Fishing?

>>I am just looking for something cool to add...

I think you need more than that for your purpose. But I guess everyone is different.

I have taken short trips to Alaska in the past. Flying Alaska Air I flew to both Juneau and Yakutat. Whale watch trip in Juneau and boat tour to Hubbard Glacier in Yakutat. Did it all with 2 nights in each place and (supposed to be) a redeye returning. Due to issues with the plane and the airline I didn't get home until a day later but it all worked out in the end. Would I recommend something like this to someone? It depends. I love Alaska for its scenery, wildlife and hiking. I love photography. With this trip in particular the main draw was visiting some European friends who were going to be in Juneau for the day. So it worked for me.

Kotzebue or Barrow. Above the Arctic Circle, interesting Eskimo culture, a landscape like you won't see anywhere else. Not just cool but frigid.

Dutch Harbor is a really cool place, so if it looks interesting to you I would do that. Just be prepared with any rural area you head to.

I've also written some trip reports that you may be interested in. I have links in the Trip Reports section, but here are direct links:
Barrow and Wainwright
Adak, Alaska

Anywhere Alaska Flies
 

Barrow would be my choice. Dutch is iffy...you could get fogged in for days. Kodiak is quite lovely in the spring.

I agree about Barrow. Just one night and you can see most everything in the northernmost city in the US. The King Eider Inn is a nice place that is basically across the street from the airport. You would probably get stops in Fairbanks and Deadhorse, which look good on a FlightMemory map.

A group of us FTers went out to ADK last summer and found it surprisingly fascinating. Note that with only two flights a week, you have to go either for one hour or three days (we did the latter, obviously). Here's a trip report from one of our group: http://alphaeagle.com/2012/08/adak-trip-report/

Despite having been to BRW, OTZ, AIN, BET, ANI, and other remote Alaskan outposts, I felt the farthest from normal life out in ADK. It takes almost as long to fly there from ANC as to fly from SEA to ANC, and in fact, it's closer to CTS than to SEA.
It's also about the best bang for your buck for redeeming an award, as it's normally a $1,000 round-trip flight from ANC.

Just throwing that out there. :)