FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

At the junction of the Parks Hwy. (#3) and the Richardson Hwy. (#4) lies the city of Fairbanks, Alaska.

It’s not the northernmost city in Alaska … not by a long shot … but it’s about as far north as you can reach on paved roads and the last stop for any kind of major modern conveniences before heading into the Arctic.

Fairbanks came into being around 1902 with a trading post built on the banks of the Chena River as gold rush fever infected the nation.

Gold is still being found in the area for a few larger operations as well as a few hardy souls panning out in the pristine wilderness.

Fairbanks today is a good sized town with a population of about 30,000 right in Fairbanks and about 100,000 total in the greater Fairbanks area. There are two large military bases in Fairbanks, Fort Wainwright and Elmendorf Airforce Base.

With the summer sun shining almost 24 hours a day … you can do almost any activity whenever you want! Favorite middle-of-the-night activities include hiking, running, golfing and even baseball! This almost constant sunlight often makes all things growing – like flowers and vegetables – 100lb cabbages aren’t outlandish!

Fairbanks is also usually the warmest spot in Alaska in the summer, but can plunge down to -50F in the winter.

Winter of course is the best time for activities like dog mushing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, curling, ice hockey and of course taking in the Northern Lights!

Something I just learned about is that in northern Alaska, including Fairbanks, few people have running water from central city water supplies! The reason? It is difficult and often impractical for Alaskan towns to keep water from freezing as it runs underground through the permafrost. This leads most homeowners to haul their own water! Things you just don’t think about!

The area around Fairbanks is forested lowland, bordered by the Alaska Range to the south and the Brooks Range to the north and is crisscrossed by the Chena and Tanana rivers.

Ok … all that stuff is your basic ‘tourist’ type of information. What did I think when I visited the city?

Well, it was nice …. A nice downtown area with a beautiful town square and pedestrian walk/bikeway along the river, and a great visitor’s centre.

Fairbanks Visitor Centre

The downtown isn’t very big … a few short streets with a couple of museums, shops and restaurants. Outside of that area it can get kind of grubby, with lots of sketchy people about. I guess that’s typical of ‘big cities’.

Downtown Fairbanks

There were some nice things to see – the best is Pioneer Park. I didn’t expect much to be honest, but it’s a great place to see some history of the area with historic buildings, films, museums, shops and a train that runs around the perimeter! Admission is free with the museums charging a nominal fee. Well worth a couple of hours!

Interesting heritage buildings in Pioneer Park

We drove out to Chena Hot Springs as I’m always happy to soak when I’m on a camping trip … but it was a bit of a disappointment for me. First, it was a LONG drive – 60 miles one way – and a lot busier and more bustling than I’d have thought. There’s lots of rooms to rent and facilities to have functions in – there were TWO weddings and a car show going on when we got there.

Chena Hot Springs

The hot springs themselves looked nice … they used big boulders as borders around the springs instead of a big cement (hot) swimming pool. We ended up not going in as it was $15/pp and it was HOT out – not the best time to soak in a hot tub for me!

Chena Hot Springs

We also wanted to check out some of the campgrounds that are off the Chena Hot Springs Road like ……….. all of which seem nice although mostly in deeply forested areas and fairly buggy. We were told they can also get a bit rowdy as they can attract the party crowds! Not for us!

There are a few museums in town such as the Ice Museum and Dog Mushing Museum which we didn’t visit – we were sort of ‘museum-ed’ out. They also have a stern wheeler paddle boat tour that you can take on the Chena River. We also opted out of that as it seems to get really crowded with the tour bus crowds plus … it didn’t look that interesting IMO. But I’ve heard other people say they really liked it … so there you go!

Riverboat Tour

So … I think if you’re into outdoor type stuff like hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, ATV-ing … you’d probably love Fairbanks as it has a lot of that available. Whether or not you like or dislike a city or attraction is a fairly personal thing. For us … Fairbanks wasn’t our favorite. Sorry Fairbanks!