down to one dairy queen

and the last one standing isn't even in Anchorage.

If you drove past the Dairy Queen on Tudor Road this week, you saw it too. The signs are down, and there are notices taped up on the doors. That spot is closed for good.

And it wasn't the only one. The other Anchorage location went dark at the same time, and the one out in Wasilla did too. Three of our go-to ice cream stops, gone all at once.

For a lot of us, that place was the after-the-game stop. The road trip treat. The thing you promised the kids if they behaved through Fred Meyer. Now the drive-thru window is dark and the parking lot's empty.

Nobody's said why. No big announcement, no goodbye post, no reason given. One week they're handing cones out the window, the next the whole sign is peeled off the building.

Here's the part that stings. There's just one Dairy Queen left in the whole state now, and it's way down on the Kenai Peninsula. So if you've got a craving up here in Anchorage or the Valley, you're looking at a serious road trip to get it.

It's wild how fast a place you drove past a hundred times can just disappear.