Blogs from Fairbanks, Alaska, United States, North America

Busy weekend. I am going to head to Seward first thing tomorrow morning since weather seems to have gone as predicted - wind should be lower and just normal rain by the time I get in vs. the heavy rain and wind they had today. I thought it was about an 8.5 hour drive but understand from some folks I spoke with yesterday that it will be more like 10 hours. So heading out early morning to arrive sometime evening. Will likely be too tired to post so please, assume no news is good news. It's all well traveled highway. I'll be fine. Will post an update Tuesday some time. God bless!... read more

Hello all from Fairbanks Alaska! I've had a great week that began by meeting up with some folks I had originally met on the Denali excursion who had also continued traveling in Alaska. We all crossed paths again here in Fairbanks for drinks the first evening (Monday evening) and then breakfast/brunch the next morning. They are headed up to see the Polar bears and since they are avid photographers, it will be a great opportunity for them. As for me, I've been to the Visitor Center here in Fairbanks which is really good with some great historical displays. I've been to their Bird Sanctuary, a Pioneer Village (mostly closed but museum was excellent), the Large Animal Station (University of Alaska), drove most of the Steese Highway until I came across snow laden roadway where I decided ... read more

We stayed in very sweet cabins in North Pole / Fairbanks area, we were surrounded by Birch and Spruce trees and had a river infront of our cabins. The weird thing was waiting for the sun to go down and for it to get dark. It only got darkish at about 11:30 but I think proper dark as we know it only came around at about 12:30am and then it started getting light again at about 4am! We didn't have a problem with that though as it gave us more play time for our day:) We went for a drive to North Pole, we attended the Sunday meeting in the North Pole congregation, It was so encouraging to meet new friends and to hear their experiences. They live in a territory of about 6000 people, have ... read more

DAY 18: SUNDAY, JULY 15: Today was an exceptionally quiet day for The Evans Family, seems kind of odd because here we are in the big city of Fairbanks, population 30,367(there is also a North Star Borough pop. 97,970). You would think big city, big lights, big things to do, but we did the opposite and just chilled out. The day started out beautiful and sunny as we slowly got moving at Wal-Mart. I typed the blog and spent a good portion of time on the phone getting all our Denali National Park reservations made because that will be where we are headed after our three days in Fairbanks. So far so good with getting great camping spots on the fly...that luck carried over when we arrived at the River's Edge RV Park here in town. ... read more

This morning Barbara gave Ruth and I a haircut. It is nice to have a beautician in the group. Then we all went to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. It has some very interesting exhibits there including Otto, the brown bear who is 8'9" and weighs 1,250 lbs. They also have on display Blue Babe, the world's only mummified Ice Age steppe bison mummy. They also have Alaska's largest public display of gold. We saw two movies - one was on the Aurora. This was really fascinating. I would love to see the Aurora but since it doesn't get dark, it's not possible. They say that Fairbanks is a very ideal place to see it. I hear that in the winter and early spring, it is beautiful. We also ... read more

5th-7th July ’12 Fairbanks So we left Denali and drove along the highway past more forests and over rivers, leaving the big mountains behind. We stopped off for a break at the settlement of Nenana, which was really just one road with a few small houses, an RV park and a couple of tourist shops, at the end of the road was the railway station/museum. It was a very strange place, there was hardly a soul about, I guess it was like a pioneer camp without the pioneers. This seems to be the norm for Alaska though, these tiny little ramshackle settlements. When we arrived in Fairbanks that felt like a larger version of the same thing. Obviously Fairbanks – The Golden Heart City, is a city and so has a substantial population and has all ... read more