Tuesday 5 September
It was brighter this morning when we woke. We breakfasted on Muffins and berries that we’d bought yesterday in Seward and hit the road by 9am. We needed to backtrack along the Turnagain Arm road as far as Anchorage before winding up past the Knik Arm inlet north of Anchorage to join the Parks Highway ( which would take us all the way to Fairbanks). We enjoyed the mornings drive as the weather was much clearer than when we’d driven down to the Kenai Peninsula.
At the small city of Wasilla we stopped in to see The Iditarod headquarters. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is one of Alaska’s iconic winter events, it traditionally starts in Anchorage on the first Saturday of March each year, and is known up here as “The Last Great Race” . The official ceremonial start is in downtown Anchorage with a smaller scale “restart” the following day in Willow ( a small town 70 miles north of Anchorage). The Willow restart provides one more chance for spectators to watch mushers and their teams before they venture to more remote sections of trail on their nearly thousand-mile journey to Nome. Iditarod mushers and their dogs battle the elements and test their own limits across the trail. The course stretches approximately 1,000 miles, from Southcentral Alaska to the town of Nome. The Headquarters has a museum and gift shop, we watched a movie which went into great details about how well the dogs are cared for and the history of the event.
From here for the rest of the drive to Denali State park the drive is through forest and the occasional small town and was not particularly scenic, the dreary weather didnt help! Late in the afternoon we detoured about 14 miles to stop in to see the small town of Talkeetna, which is reputed to be quaint, quirky and picturesque. It’s a mecca for tourists and the drive in is supposed to afford some great views of the mountains but the low cloud hid any view from us. In Talkeetna itself the rain was falling steadily so after a drive around town we decided to skip it and see if the weather was better when we drive back this way in a few days.
Eventually we pulled in at the McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, a stop for the night. This one, like the one one the Kenai Peninsula is run by Princess cruises and caters largely to their tour groups. However they are also happy to take bookings from independent travellers like us. The lodge was very rustic, just look at the antler door handles at the main entrance!
We’d arrived fairly late in the afternoon and after a scratch breakfast and lunch we were hungry so after a quick look around the main building we decided to go to 20,320 Alaskan Grill for dinner. The 20,320 refers to the height of Mt Denali ( Previously known as Mt McKinley). We had another tasty and generous meal, we enjoyed the warm artichoke and crab dip appetizer.
Wednesday 6 September
We decided on another light breakfast this morning, more of the muffins we’d bought at Seward and fruit, before heading out into the grey day. I’d been looking forward to driving the “scenic” section of the Parks Highway but the weather defeated us a bit. Our first stop at denali South viewpoint should have provided a great view of the mountain range. People don’t often get to see Mt Denali itself as it’s peak is often hidden in clouds but today we couldn’t see much further than the river below! However , they had kindly provided a sign for us to see what we should have been seeing!
The next stop was the Alaska Veterans memorial, a very substantial memorial dedicated to all those Alaskans who have fought and died in various conflicts. It was placed here in the middle of nowhere as it is roughly midway between Anchorage and Fairbanks and also has a wonderful view to Denali ( in the right weather!)
A little furthe rup the road we came to Denali North Viewpoint, this time Neil helpfully pointed to where the mountains should be :-). As we continued north the weather did start to clear a little and we were able to see fresh dustings of snow on the nearer peaks to the east of us. One very odd site along this stretch is the derelict Igloo City Hotel and Gas Station. Igloo City was constructed in the late 1970s by Leon Smith. He envisioned it as a hotel, though it was never completed due to code violations.Because this building was too big to demolish, it has remaines standing today, gradually desintegrating!
Finally we arrived in Fairbanks and as we were to early to go to the hotel we stopped in at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center, which houses some really excellent exhibits about the history of and life in the more northern parts of Alaska. There are artistic displays from local artists and craftspeople as well, one particularly lovely quilt caught my eye. They also display the latest predictions for Aurora viewing in the area, as this is a prime area to see the Northern lights.
Just outside the museum is the “Antler Arch”, made up of more than 100 moose and caribou antlers that were collected from all over Interior Alaska. It’s an impressive structure that is very Alaskana.
Ten sets of antlers came from the village of Huslia and 15 sets of antlers were collected from Fort Yukon. Additional antlers are from Fairbanks, North Pole, Dot Lake, the Minto Flats, Tok, Koyukuk, Delta, Northway and the Tanana Flats.
Another odd site caught our eye nearby, a house with it’s solar panels mounted almost vertically, facing the south! They are so far north here they really need to adjust their panels to catch every scrap of the low slanted sunlight for much of the year!
Next we drove alittle north of town to see a short section of the Alyeska Oil Pipeline. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline connects the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, with the harbour at Valdez, 800 miles to the south. The discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope in 1968 spurred the creation of a safe and efficient way to bring those reserves to market. Atlantic Richfield Company, British Petroleum , and Humble Oil agreed to build a pipeline that would connect the North Slope to Valdez, an ice-free port on Prince William Sound . The movement of oil through the 48-inch pipe is a constant flow at roughly 4 miles per hour and complete the journey from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez in about nine days. It was a phenomenal engineering exercise but the pipeline has had its share of disasters with the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 which saw a massive spill of oilinto Prince William Sound.
Then we drove on to checkin to our hotel, Pikes Riverside Lodge which has a really pleasant location on the bans of the Chena River ( and right next door to the sirport!) It’s a comfortable hotel that bills itself as the “Friendliest Hotel in Fairbanks”, they offer free icecream in the afternoon and give each arriving guest a peach pie! The inside is decorated in an interetsing mix of tiffany lighting, dark “English pub” style decor and a selection of stuffed animals! Across the river is a big “Love Alaska” sign and they have recently built a small ‘Aurora Discovery Institute”, with displays about the Northern lights.
They also had some extensive displays inside about the Iditarod Sled race as there were a few occasions when the Willow “restart” of the race had to be moved to Fairbanks due to poor conditions in the Alaska Range. On those occasions the restart was staged from the Pikes Hotel carpark and it was a very big event for them.
For dinner we walked across the carparks to the nearby Pikes Landing restaurant and also took a look at some of the hotels unusual decor in their riverside garden.
We’d had an early dinner… and by 7.30 pm we were in bed…for a nap! Tonight we were booked with the Aurora Chasers for a Photography oriented Norther lights tour. They were to pick us up from the hotel at 10.15 pm and we would be out until approximately 4am. So we figured we’d try to get a little nana-nap in before we went out. I think I dozed off for around 20 minutes but otherwise we really just had a rest. At 10pm we were down in the lobby waiting with the other people whoe had also booked the tour. Ronn and Marketta arrived promptly at 10.15 and we piled into the 12 seater van. It was very comofortably heated with a large drop down led screen and red lights ( so our night sight woulnd’t be affected) . We knew tonight would be a challenge as we’d been watching the weather but Ronn an Marketta had their satellite quipment and radar and did their best to find a good location. We tried a couple and evenually just settled down to wait out the weather. Ronn gave a really excellent workshop on the best settings for all the various cameras that people had and also showed some excellent video documentary about the science of the Aurora.
Did you know that unless the aurura is a particulaly strong one ( boosted by high solar winds etc) that the human eye just doesn’t see them in colour? Our night sight is really only geared to viewing in black and white and grey so when the aurora is out it really just appears white to the human eye. Cameras don’t have that problem, the camera sensor records the colour so when we saw a white light in the sky we held up our cameras and could see the green in the viewfinder. It was extraordinary!
We waited along time in the bus, drank hot cocoa and coffee and chatted a little to the other people. Ronn and Marketta kept checking their data and eventually at around 2.30 am we all piled out of the bus to take the bst shots we could under tricky circumstances. The lights were veiled by the cloud cover but we could see the white bright patches with our eyes, and as we took the long exposure shots with the cameras we could see the green colour at last.
One of the Aurora Chasers features on their tour is to take portraits of you in front of the Aurora. Marketta asked us to stand very still for around 15 seconds for the long exposure at at one point biefly flashed a torch at us. The results turned out pretty well! One shot was at around 2.30am when the star were out but the Aurora was a bit dim, the later one was at 3am – we were looking pretty bleary eyed by that stage!!
Finally at about 3.30 we left our spot in the hills south of Fairbanks and headed back into town. We climbed into bed at 4.15 am. What a night!