Sights in The Interior
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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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Mt McKinley
Encompassing both the north and south flanks of the Alaska Range, 237 miles from Anchorage and about half that distance from Fairbanks, Denali National Park is an immense subarctic wilderness centered on Mt McKinley - North America's highest peak and an overwhelming sight when caught on a clear day. At 20,320ft, the peak of this massif is almost 4 miles high, but what makes it stunning is that it rises from an elevation of just 2000ft.
From Park Rd, you'll see 18,000ft of rock, snow and glacier reaching for the sky. In contrast, Mt Everest, the world's highest mountain at 29,028ft, rises only 11,000ft from the lofty Tibetan Plateau.
Mt McKinley is not visible from the park…
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Golden Sands Beach
A very interesting afternoon can be spent at Nome's Golden Sands Beach , stretching a mile east of town along Front St. At the height of summer a few local children may be seen playing in the 45°F water, and on Memorial Day (in May), more than 100 masochistic residents plunge into the ice-choked waters for the annual Polar Bear Swim.
Usually more numerous than swimmers here are gold prospectors, as the beach is open to recreational mining. Miners will set up camp along the shore and work the sands throughout the summer. The serious miners rig their sluice and dredging equipment on a small pontoon boat and anchor it 100yd offshore to suck up the more productive sand along…
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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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Fairview Inn
Closed in 2005, it would be a travesty if the Fairview Inn failed to reopen. Though not an official museum, it might as well be. Founded in 1923 to serve as the overnight stop between Seward and Fairbanks on the newly constructed Alaska Railroad, the inn is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Its old plank-floored saloon is classic Alaska: its walls are covered with racks of antlers, various furry critters (including a grizzly on the ceiling) and lots of local memorabilia. One corner holds Talkeetna's only slot machine; another is devoted to President Warren G Harding. When the railroad was finished in 1923, Harding arrived in Alaska and rode the rails to …
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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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Park Rd
Park Rd begins at George Parks Hwy and winds 92 miles through the heart of the park, ending at Kantishna, an old mining settlement and the site of several wilderness lodges. Early on, park officials envisaged the onset of bumper-to-bumper traffic jams along this road and wisely closed almost all of it to private vehicles. With few exceptions, motorists can drive only to a parking area along the Savage River at Mile 14, a mile beyond the Savage River Campground. To venture further along the road you must walk, bike, be part of a concessionaire-run tour, or, most popularly, take a park shuttle or camper bus.
If you're planning to spend the day riding the buses, pack plenty …
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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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Coldfoot
From Gobbler's Knob (Mile 132) northward, the pyramids of the Brooks Range begin to dominate the scene. In the next 50 miles you'll cross several grayling-rich streams, including Prospect Creek, which, in January 1971, experienced America's lowest-ever temperature, -80°F. Then, at Mile 175, in a mountain-rimmed hollow, you'll arrive in Coldfoot. Originally named Slate Creek, the area was first settled by miners in 1898.
When a group of greenhorns got 'cold feet' at the thought of wintering in the district they headed south, and the community was renamed accordingly. It was a ghost town by 1912, but its moniker, at least, was revived in 1981, when Iditarod musher Dick Mac…
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NANA Museum of the Arctic
Kotzebue is named after Polish explorer Otto von Kotzebue, who stumbled onto the village in 1816 while searching for the Northwest Passage on behalf of the Russians. Much of the town's history and culture can be viewed at the NANA Museum of the Arctic, at the western end of town. The centre is owned and operated by the Northwest Alaska Native Association (NANA), and a two-hour programme of indigenous culture is held at 4pm and 6.30pm daily in summer. The programme includes demonstrations of Inupiat handicrafts and a nalukataq, the traditional blanket toss, which historically allowed people to gain enough elevation to observe vast distances of terrain. Although the present…
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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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Cemetery
The most solemn way to appreciate the effect of the mountain on Talkeetna is to visit the Cemetery, a restful spot set among tall trees on 2nd St, just off Talkeetna Spur Rd near the airport. Don Sheldon's grave is the most prominent, with the epitaph 'He wagered with the wind and won'. The Mt McKinley Climber's Memorial includes a stone for Ray Genet, despite the fact that his body was never removed from the slopes of Mt Everest.
The most touching sight, however, is a memorial with the names and ages of all the climbers who've died on Mt McKinley and neighboring peaks. Particularly grim was the annus horribilis of 1991, when 11 lives were lost.
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Shore Avenue
Perhaps the most interesting thing to do in Kotzebue is just stroll down Shore Avenue, where the old and new Arctics collide. On the beach, elders gut seals and dry salmon in preparation for the long winter ahead; meanwhile, youth skim their supercharged snowmachines across the water, wowing their buddies on shore. Across the road, a long line of caribou antler-adorned, weather-battered shacks stands as testament to the endurance of this place. Shore Ave also offers the best views of the midnight sun as it rolls along the horizon, painting the sea reddish gold with reflected light. From early June the sun doesn't set for almost six weeks.
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Anvil Mountain
The climb up 1062ft Anvil Mountain is the closest hike to Nome and the only one that can be easily pulled off without a car. Follow the Teller Hwy 3.5 miles from town to Glacier Creek Rd, which takes you directly onto the mountain. After the road veers left, look for a smooth route up the slope and commence your climb. It's about one mile round-trip to the summit, ascending through wonderful wildflower patches.
At the top you'll find the giant parabolic antennae of the Cold War-era White Alice Communications System, plus great views of town and the ocean as well as the Kigluaik Mountains farther inland.
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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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Muldrow Glacier
Past Eielson, Park Rd drops to the valley below, passing a sign for Muldrow Glacier. At this point, the glacier lies about a mile to the south, and the terminus of the 32-mile ice floe is clearly visible, though you might not recognize it because the ice is covered with a mat of plant life. If the weather is cloudy and Mt McKinley and the surrounding peaks are hidden, the final 20 miles of the bus trip will be a ride through rolling tundra and past numerous small lakes known as kettle ponds.
Study the pools of water carefully to spot beavers or waterfowl.
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Deadhorse
You'll know the coast draws near when the weather turns dire. Even in summer, wind, fog and bitter cold are de rigueur at the Arctic Ocean. The gloom sets the mood for your arrival at the dystopia of Deadhorse, the world's northernmost anticlimax. Centered around Lake Colleen, this is no town - nobody lives here permanently - but a sad expanse of aluminum-clad warehouses, machinery-laden lots and workmen counting the moments until they return south.
Don't even think about camping: the tundra is a quagmire and the gravel pads are plied by speeding pickups.
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St Joseph Church
Built in 190, when there were 30,000 people living in Nome, this huge church was originally located on Front St, and the electrically lit cross at the top of the building was used as a beacon for seamen. By the 1920s the population of the city had plummeted to less than 900 and the Jesuits abandoned the structure.
The church was used for storage by a mining company before the city purchased it in 1996, moving it to its present location and restoring it as a multipurpose building. You'll have to admire it from the outside, as it will likely be locked.
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Sullivan Roadhouse
Across the parking lot from the visitor center is Sullivan Roadhouse. The classic log structure was built in 1906 and served travelers along the old Fairbanks-Valdez Trail until 1927. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and in 1997 was moved, log by log, from Fort Greely to its present location in the Triangle.
Now a museum, the roadhouse displays historic photographs and excavated artifacts in several exhibits dedicated to travel in Alaska in the early 1900s, the so-called 'roadhouse era.'
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Sanctuary River Valley
From Savage River, the road dips into the Sanctuary and Teklanika River valleys, and Mt McKinley disappears behind the foothills. Both these rivers are in excellent hiking areas, and three of the five backcountry campgrounds lie along them. Sanctuary River Campground is the most scenic, and it's a good base camp for hiking up Primrose Ridge.
The closed Igloo Creek Campground (Mile 34) lies in spruce woods along the creek. From here you can make an easy day hike into the Igloo and Cathedral Mountains to spot Dall sheep.
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Gobbler's Knob
Don't come rolling up the Dalton Hwy to the Arctic Circle on the solstice, expecting the midnight sun. See those mountains to the north? The golden orb ducks behind them at the magical moment - and then the bugs really start biting. To view El Sol all night (and having driven this far, you might as well), continue to Gobbler's Knob, a hilltop lookout at Mile 132 where there's a pullover, an outhouse and, if you scale the hill to the east on the first night of summer, perpetual sun.
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Sukapak Mountain Lookout
North from Wiseman the Dalton skirts the east edge of Gates of the Arctic National Park. Dall sheep are often visible on the mountain slopes, and the scenery goes into overdrive. By Mile 194 the first views appear of the massive wall of Sukakpak Mountain (4459ft) looming dead ahead. Just before Mile 204 is a lookout with a half-mile trail to Sukakpak's face, while soon after, even taller promontories arise - imposing black talus cones, 7000ft high, riven by glacier-carved valleys.
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