Sights in Fairbanks
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Museum of the North
Museum of the North at the University of Alaska rivals the Anchorage Museum of History & Art as the state's most impressive cultural center. A $42 million expansion added a Alaska Native art gallery and a sound-and-light theatre that features the northern lights. But the most popular exhibit is still Blue Babe, a 36,000-year-old bison found preserved in the permafrost.
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Fairbanks Ice Museum
Certainly the most bemusing sight in the city's downtown - and by far the best place to chill out - is the Fairbanks Ice Museum . This hour-long experience takes place in the historic, musty-smelling Lacey Street Theater, which you'll likely have largely to yourself. First comes the screening of the film Freeze Frame, which employs dramatic editing to chronicle the World Ice Art Championships, an ice-sculpting contest held in Fairbanks each March.
Then the lights come up to reveal an array of life-sized crystalline carvings ringing the theatre. They're all stereotypical Alaskan scenes - howling huskies and bears wrestling salmon - and some are slightly melted or broken. I…
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Circle District Historical Society Museum
One of the best museums of any small Alaskan town is the Circle District Historical Society Museum in Central. Established in 1984, the main portion of the museum is a large log lodge that houses a miner's cabin, exhibits on early mining equipment and dog-team freight and mail hauling, and the Yukon Press - the first printing press north of Juneau, which produced Interior Alaska's first newspaper.
The most interesting display is the museum's collection of gold nuggets and gold flakes recovered and donated by local miners. This display, more than anything else, will help you understand why they continue to tear away at the hills and streams in an effort to find the preciou…
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University of Alaska Fairbanks
University of Alaska Fairbanks is the original campus of the state's university system and an interesting place to spend an afternoon. Incorporated in 1917 as the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, the school began its first year with six students. Today, it has more than 8000, and hundreds of degree and certificate programs.
The beautiful campus is 4 miles west of downtown, on a hilltop from which you can see Mt McKinley on a clear day. An Alaska Range viewpoint on Yukon Dr, near the University of Alaska Museum, provides a turnout and a marker detailing the mountainous horizon.
Guided campus tours are offered at 10:00 weekdays; meet at the museum. The tours …
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Chena Hot Springs Resort
At the end of Chena Hot Springs Rd is the Chena Hot Springs Resort. The springs themselves were discovered by gold miners in 1905, and by 1912 they were the premier place to soak for the happy residents of boom town Fairbanks. They still are. The busiest season for this resort, by far, is winter, and often during midweek in the summer you can score on some impressive 'slow season discounts'.
The Chena springs are at the centre of a 40 sq mile geothermal area and produce a steady stream of water that's so hot, it must be cooled before you can even think about putting a toe in. The most popular activity is hot-tub soaking, done both outdoors and indoors. Other activities in…
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Fairbanks Community Museum
Fairbanks Community Museum , though not thrilling, merits a visit on a rainy day. This homespun place traces the city's history mainly through old photos and newspaper clippings.
More interestingly, the museum is also home to the Yukon Quest Cache, with a gift shop and displays devoted to the city's seminal dog-sled race. Like a handful of other Alaskan towns, Fairbanks bills itself as the dog mushing capital of the world. The Yukon Quest, taking place each February, covers 1023 miles between here and Whitehorse along many of the early trails used by trappers, miners and the postal service. Though less famous than the Iditarod , mushers will attest that the Quest is tough…
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Manley Hot Springs Town
The town of Manley Hot Springs may be one of the loveliest discoveries you'll make in Alaska. At the end of a long, lonely road, here's a gem of a town, full of friendly folks, well-kept log homes and luxuriant gardens. Located between Hot Springs Slough and the Tanana River, the community was first homesteaded in 1902 by JF Karshner, just as the US Army Signal Corps arrived to put in a telegraph station.
A few years later, as the place boomed with miners from the nearby Eureka and Tofty districts, Frank Manley arrived and built a four-story hotel. Most of the miners are gone now, but Manley's name - and the spirit of an earlier era - remains. In modern times the town has…
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Northern Lights
For many visitors, Fairbanks' primary pulling power lies in a natural phenomenon: the Aurora Borealis, better known as the Northern Lights. As solar winds flow across the earth's upper atmosphere, they hit gas molecules which light up, much like the high-vacuum electrical discharge of a neon sign.
What you end up with is a solar-powered light show of waving, diaphanous light streaming across the night sky. In the dead of winter, the aurora often fills the sky for hours. Other nights, 'the event', as many call it, lasts less than 10 minutes.
This polar phenomenon has been seen as far south as Mexico, but Fairbanks is the undisputed aurora capital. The best viewing is from …
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Georgeson Botanical Garden
Georgeson Botanical Garden is a kaleidoscope of flowers, herbs, fruits and gigantic vegetables, and the Large Animal Research Station.
On the station grounds is the 5-acre Georgeson Botanical Garden, a perfect picnicking spot that's a riot of wildflowers, herbs, fruits and gigantic vegetables. You can look around independently anytime during opening hours, and guided tours are offered on Fridays at 14:00.
To reach the station take Tanana Loop west from the lower campus, bear left at the fork onto W Tanana Dr and continue for a mile.
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Manley Hot Springs
Privately owned by famously hospitable Chuck and Gladys Dart, bathing happens within a huge, thermal-heated greenhouse that's a veritable Babylonian garden of grapes, Asian pears and hibiscus flowers. Deep in this jungle are three spring-fed concrete tubs, each burbling at different temperatures. Pay your money, hose yourself down, pluck some fruit and soak away in this deliriously un-Alaskan setting.
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Hutlinana Creek
Hutlinana Creek is reached at Mile 129, and a quarter mile east of the bridge is an 8-mile creekside trail to Hutlinana Warm Springs, an undeveloped thermal area with a 3ft-deep pool. The springs are visited mainly in winter; in summer, the buggy bushwhack seems uninviting. From the bridge it's another 23 miles southwest to Manley Hot Springs.
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Hutlinana Warm Springs
Hutlinana Creek is reached at Mile 129, and a quarter mile east of the bridge is an 8-mile creekside trail to Hutlinana Warm Springs, an undeveloped thermal area with a 3ft-deep pool. The springs are visited mainly in winter; in summer, the buggy bushwhack seems uninviting. From the bridge it's another 23 miles southwest to Manley Hot Springs.
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Wood Center
A good place to start exploring the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus is Wood Center, where the information desk provides the UAF Campus Map & Visitors' Guide and the latest scoop on university events. This student center and general meeting place also holds a cafeteria, espresso stand, pizza parlor, pub and an outdoor patio.
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Livengood
Livengood, 2 miles east of the highway at Mile 71, has no services and is little more than a scattering of log shanties. Here, the Elliott Hwy swings west and in 2 miles, at the junction of the Dalton Hwy, pavement ends and the road becomes a rutted, rocky lane. Traffic evaporates and until Manley Hot Springs you may not see another vehicle.
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Goldpanners
The Goldpanners is Fairbanks' entry in the collegiate-level Alaska Baseball League, which also includes teams from Anchorage, Mat-Su Valley and Kenai Peninsula. Games are played mid-June through July at Growden Memorial Park, starting at 19:00. Don't miss the Midnight Sun Baseball Game on June 21 - it's a century-old tradition.
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Felix Pedro Monument
On the Steese Hwy, the Felix Pedro Monument commemorates the miner whose gold-strike gave birth to Fairbanks. The stream across the highway - now known as Pedro Creek - is where it all happened. You'll likely see amateur goldpanners there 'looking for color.'
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Tolovana River turnoff
At Mile 57, where a bridge crosses the Tolovana River, there's an old BLM campground that's no longer maintained, but there's still a turnoff here. The fishing here is good for grayling and northern pike, though the mosquitoes are of legendary proportions.
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Pioneer Park
Pioneer Park is a 44-acre park and the city's biggest attraction. The historical displays are impressive and include an old stern-wheeler, the railroad car that carried President Warren Harding, and giant gold dredgers.
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Pioneer Museum
The Pioneer Museum is mainly a jumble of antiques ostensibly chronicling the history of Fairbanks. This is also where, six times daily, you can catch the 40-minute Big Stampede Show, reenacting gold-rush days.
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Circle
Circle is an Alaska-Native village on the banks of the broad Yukon River. Before the Dalton Hwy opened it was the northernmost point you could drive to - as a large sign in the center of town still proclaims.
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Pioneer Air Transportation Museum
The geodesic Pioneer Air Transportation Museum is chock-full of exhibits on the state's groundbreaking aviation history - there's even an experimental gyroplane and a 'flying saucer.'
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Minto
At Mile 110 is the paved 11-mile road to the small Athabascan village of Minto, population 207, which isn't known for welcoming strangers.
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