Fairbanks

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Fairbanks

June 28

We planned to arrive in Fairbanks two days before the hiking tour started so we had room for airline error.  We stopped in Minneapolis where Emilie took her altitude sickness medicine before the long flight to Alaska.

Well, of course, we got to Fairbanks on time. So now we get an extra day to discover Fairbanks. We arrived in Fairbanks at 8:30 p.m., which is 12:30 a.m. EST. We got our bag, which is unusual for us as we hardly ever check luggage. Then we hopped on the hotel shuttle to Pike’s Waterfront Lodge about 10 minutes from the airport. Once there, I asked if our room had a view of the river, and the person at the desk said no, so I asked for one, and they changed our room. Glad I asked. It was a rather small room though, with a very small unsittable balcony for $280 per night. Nothing special, though the restaurant was very nice and the breakfasts were excellent. We then went next door to Pikes’s Landing for beers on their beautiful firepit-laced patio overlooking the Chena River. It was a nice unwind from a day of travel, and a nice way to celebrate our first day in Alaska, and Emilie’s 50^th state! After about an hour, we walked back to the hotel and went to bed at 10:30 p.m., and it was still light outside.

June 29 – Fairbanks

We had a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel’s beautiful dining room overlooking the river. We tried the reindeer sausage, eh…it tasted like kielbasa, but with the guilt of eating Donner or Blitzen.

We had one day to see Fairbanks so we opted for two things we could get in based on TripAdvisor. We first took a Lyft to the University of Alaska Museum of the North. This is a very impressive, outstanding museum with lots of terrific historical, even ancient artifacts of the native culture. We were there for 2.5 hours and would have stayed longer but we had to get to our riverboat tour which started at 2:00 p.m.

 

We took a Lyft to our 3-hour Riverboat Discovery tour along the Chena River. When we got there, we could not believe how many people were there. The people were already lined up to get on the boat at around 1:30, and it was as if Elvis had came back to life for one performance only, and it was on this boat. I mean, it was a mass of people swarmed around the wrap-around porch of the very large ticket and souvenir building. I saw one review online that said they were concerned by the number of people getting on board but were relieved when they got on board because there was plenty of room for everybody. The reviewer was right, it really wasn’t too bad once we found a seat.

The tour was pretty hokey, but it was done very professionally and with a slight tongue in cheekness. It was just the right tone, really. We saw a float plane demonstration right beside the riverboat, and a dogsled kennel with a demo of mushing on the shore from the side of the boat. The boat then stopped at a replica native Chena village where we got off the boat and toured. It was done very well with engaging native teenagers providing commentary and demonstrations at each of the station stops in the village.

The museum, and then this riverboat ride were actually very good introductions for us to Alaskan culture. When we got back to the dock we found a hotel shuttle waiting there so just got on it.

We had dinner at Big Daddy’s BBQ in downtown Fairbanks on recommendation from the hotel desk person. We took a hotel shuttle service to and from Fairbanks for $6 each. Big Daddy’s didn’t look like much from the outside, being on a side street with not much signage. But it was hopping inside, and the food and service were excellent. Seemed like everybody in town was eating here.

We walked around downtown Fairbanks for a little while. It was unimpressive. There was nothing going on anywhere, and there were many homeless and otherwise poor and/or impaired people mulling around. There was a walkway along the Chena riverfront that took us to Antler Arch and the Visitors Center. Both of these were worth the walk, fortunately. The Visitors Center, though well stocked with information and artifacts just paled in comparison to the Museum of the North that we went to earlier in the day, so we didn’t stay too long. The Antler Arch is an archway along the walk that contains over 100 moose paddles, and caribou and reindeer antlers as basically one “sculpture”. Pretty cool. We didn’t stay too long downtown since there wasn’t much to keep us there.

 

Next: Backroads Hiking Tour (Denali)