There’s Lots to See in Fairbanks

(2018 Alaska Ep 42)

Signs of change were everywhere – shorter days and cooler nights, more days of rain, fireweed plants losing their flowers and turning red, and birch tree leaves changing from green to dull green to yellow.  Highways, campgrounds and attractions even seemed to be slowing down.  With mid-August, fall is right around the corner and our time in Alaska was growing short.  

The trip from Denali to Fairbanks was an easy four hour drive and we found a  campground in North Pole, a few miles east of Fairbanks (RabbiTRAILS Alaska Map, pt #48).

For a relatively small city (population 33,000 in 2016), Fairbanks has a lot to see and do.

The Alaska oil pipeline passes nearby on its way from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.   North of town, you can view the actual pipeline along with several displays with interesting pipeline information.  We’ll be seeing lots more of the pipeline in the days to come…

North Pole is the ultimate Christmas destination – the street light poles are shaped like candy canes and you can find just about anything Christmas in the Santa Claus House.  They even have the world’s largest Santa at 42 feet and live reindeer next door at Antler Academy.

At University of Alaska Fairbanks we enjoyed outstanding exhibits about Alaskan art, wildlife and people at the Museum of the North and later learned about Alaska fauna at the Georgeson Botanical Gardens.

We watched hundreds of sandhill cranes circle the gardens and land on a large field across the road.  It is one of the areas in town where migratory birds rest during their long distance flights south.  Elsewhere in Fairbanks is Creamers Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, located on a large tract of land that used to be a dairy.  We saw lots of sandhill cranes, Canadian geese, ducks, trumpeter swans and more.

The highlight of our Fairbanks stay was a trip north to the Artic Circle.  More on that in the next blog post!