The drive from Tok to Fairbanks (population 31,856) was only 202 miles. We followed the Tanana River Valley the entire distance and paralleled the Delta Range along its eastern boundary. The scenery was dotted with snow, and the weather was clear for the most part. We stopped for gas at Delta Junction, the original north terminus of the Alaska Highway. I asked the station attendant if there was some kind of monument celebrating this historic fact so we could get a picture. He responded yes; however, also explained it had been taken down to be refurbuished. Oh well! We continued north across three braided rivers and through more boreal forests.
We were cruising along about 50 miles from Fairbanks on the east side of the valley when I looked to the west and saw this looming mountain that I knew had to be Denali. MFI peeked to her left and exclaimed, “Wow”! She pulled off into a small parking lot, so I could take a few pictures. I asked the driver of an Alaska DOT truck parked nearby if that was Denali, and he proudly confirmed it. I checked our map location and was shocked to see that we were about 100 miles away from this monster. At 20,310′ tall, Denali is the highest peak in North America and was definitely on our bucket list for this trip. We considered ourselves extremely lucky to see it, since The Milepost warns tourists not to get their hopes up, because the mountain is obscured by clouds more often than not .
Eleven miles south of Fairbanks was the city of North Pole (population 2,094). We had a birthday card for Jon’s wife, Katherine, and we just couldn’t resist mailing it from there. MFI made certain that the envelope would be postmarked accordingly. We could only imagine how busy this post office must be for Christmas each year. It came as no surprise that the city was decorated as if it were already December.
In Fairbanks, we camped at Fort Wainwright’s Moose Loop RV military campground just inside the western main gate. We stayed for two weeks, because I had a 5-day plan for us to drive north on the Dalton Highway (AK 11) to cross the Arctic Circle, go far enough north (293 miles from Fairbanks) to see Atigun Pass (the 4,800′ Brooks Range continental divide), and experience many interesting sights along the way. Unfortunately, I hadn’t fully shared this plan with MFI, who, when I did share it, reacted with an understandable and deflating, “I don’t believe you’ve fully thought this through.” I referred to The Milepost again and began to identify all the actions we’d need to take to deal with potential flat tires, running out of gas, and cracked windshields to name just a few. A trip on the Dalton was clearly not for the unprepared or faint of heart. Needless to say, my plan was scrapped. However, during our stay, we met campsite neighbors who had just returned successfully from a similar trip to the Arctic Ocean on the Dempster Highway in Canada. MFI began to ruminate on this as a possible alternative to my plan. Our site at Fort Wainwright was economical, sizable, and in a beautiful setting.
Fort Wainwright was initially called Ladd Field. This Army Air Corps base was established in 1939 as war loomed in Europe, and strategists saw a need for facilities to defend Alaska. After the U.S. entered World War II, the Army constructed a proper airfield, hangars, housing and support buildings. The mission of Ladd Field was cold weather experimentation on aircraft and a transfer point for lend-lease planes headed to Russia during the war. The base was transferred to the Army in 1961; was renamed on 4 February 1985 after Jonathon M. Wainwright (a WW II Medal of Honor recipient); and added to the National Register of Historic Places that same day. Today, Fort Wainwright hosts the 11th Airborne Division “Artic Angels” and “Arctic Wolves.” Aircraft include six types of helicopters including: Apache, Blackhawk, and Chinook; and the Gray Eagle, a remotely piloted unmanned observation aircraft. Fort Wainwright covers 1.6 million acres, which make it the largest U.S. Military installation outside the contiguous States, and is home to approximately 15,000 soldiers and civilian employees.
Fairbanks is the largest Alaskan interior city, second largest in the state behind Anchorage, and is home to the University of Alaska, which in 1917 was the founding campus for Alaska’s university system. Like so many northern cities, it was founded by frontier adventurers whom became stranded while travelling on uncooperative rivers. In this case, Captain E.T. Barnett ran aground on the Chena River 7 miles upstream from where he had hoped to establish a trading post on the Tanana River. Two gold prospectors working in the area promised impending opportunity and convinced Barnett to stay put and build his trading post. When gold was discovered nearby, it sparked the Fairbanks Gold Rush, rapid population growth, and a construction boom. Area resident’s voted in November 1903 to incorporate Fairbanks as a city, and Barnett became the first mayor.
The area’s history had began much earlier though. Athabascan first nation peoples fished and hunted there periodically but never established a permanent settlement. Archaeologists discovered a 3,500 year old camp on the grounds of the university. They also uncovered items, such as arrowheads dating back 10,000 years, at archaeological sites on Fort Wainwright. These items matched similar ones discovered in Asia and provided some of the first evidence of human migration to north America via the Beringa Land Bridge.
With two weeks in Fairbanks, we located our go-to coffee shop and breakfast joint. Luckily, both were at the same establishment called Great Harvest, only 2 miles from our campsite (pictured). We tried several other coffee shops and restaurants, but none met our standards. Of course, we also located a number of convenient Starbucks, including one in the Wainwright Exchange.
Joe Persichina, the 39-year old son of our dear friends Lou and Ilsa Persichina of Rolling Hills Estates, CA, had played post-college summer ball with the Alaska baseball minor league team called the Goldpanners of Fairbanks. The Goldpanners were founded in 1960 as a collegiate summer barnstorming league and for a period between 1974 and 2015, were charter members of the Alaska Baseball League, before returning to barnstorming status. MFI spied a flyer somewhere that said military and their dependents attended ballgames for free, so we looked up the next home game and spent a date night at Growden Memorial Park. The ballfield sat 3,500 and had an upgraded artificial turf infield and new scoreboard. The employees we encountered were warm and friendly, the grounds were appointed with beautiful flowers, and walls around the entrance to the stands were illustrsated with an impressive history of ball players who played as Goldpanners and went on to MLB stardom. Players such as Tom Seaver, Dave Winfield, Rick Monday, Jason Giambi, and Barry Bonds to name just a few. Growden and the Panners also hosted the iconic Midnight Sun Game, which started as a local amateur event in 1906. The game was played on the summer solstice, always started at about 10:30 pm and ended around 1:30 am, and has never used artificial lighting. Colorful posters for this unique and classic ballgame lined the stadium. We missed the playing of the 119th Midnight Sun Game by only 2 weeks.
Readers may recall that the clinic in Skagway, where MFI was last seen for her hand injury, arranged a follow-up visit for her at the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Clinic of Fairbanks. It had been 7 weeks since she had fallen in Glacier National Park and broken her ring finger. Since then, she had diligently worn a wrist-hand-finger splint as instructed by doctors at the hospitals in Whitefish, MT and Canmore, Alberta. She met with Dr. Mark Wade (Fellowship-trained Orthopedic Surgeon), who absolutely met MFI’s definition of an MD, Medical Deity. This guy was absolutely full of himself and, after reviewing her x-rays, asserted she should never have worn the splint beyond 2 weeks (too late now) and claimed, as a result, she would never regain full use of her hand. One thing I’ve learned over our years together is that you never tell MFI what she can’t do. She challenged Dr. Wade’s claim, vowed she would reacquire full use of her hand, and silently committed to make a liar out of him. Several days later, Dr. James Lewis, Chiropractor, Arctic Chiropractic, saw MFI at her request and provided a series of physical therapy exercises designed for her hand. So there!
I took a picture of this wall decoration hanging in Dr. Wade’s office area. The irony of “All-Things-Being-Bigger-In-Texas” when compared to the massive size of Alaska was not lost on us. I thought this was perhaps also a good analogy for Dr. Wade’s overblown ego as compared to all the other more superior-skilled doctors in his field. Wasn’t Dr. Wade cute?
We went to the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center to gather free information on where in Alaska we might go. Inside the entrance, I photographed a cardboard cut-out of a warmly-dressed first nation woman holding a placard, which recounted the time statistics of the current arctic day. Interesting! They had a wall of pamphlets, which covered every major city and “must see” attractions, and we were greeted by a host of helpful employees. We collected a broad range of materials for future reference and toured fascinating displays covering the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, Archeology on Ice, and The Language Nook. On the grounds, they had resurrected a pioneer cabin, complete with outhouse, and erected an “Antler Arch” at the entrance to a trail through downtown along the Chena River. The arch was comprised of over 100 moose and caribou antlers from across Interior Alaska. According to the interpretive display, each was donated in the spirit of linking their personal back stories and representing the intertwined lives of the Alaskan people.
One of the things I noticed, first in Canada and now here in Alaska, was how residents and communities took advantage of the long sunny days across a short summer to plant and decorate with lots of flowers. This was well demonstrated during a hike I took along the Chena River from our campsite into downtown. Here are a variety of the colorful flowers I saw in planted beds and enjoyed throughout the city.
Like most buidlings in Alaska, downtown Fairbanks wasn’t built to make any architectural design statements beyond perhaps practicality. Nevertheless, I share these pictures to give you a feeling for the city. A surprising number of buildings were historic pine structures or had more recently used pine to reflect the frontier character and capitalize on locally-available resources.
Before leaving town, we got a “Check Brakes” alert while driving around town and took Sid to Fairbanks Chevrolet for an inspection. Sure enough, we needed new front brakes. Fortun ately, their repair department fit us into their busy schedule and took great care of both us and the truck. Once again we were grateful for finding road heroes to save us from potential disaster. Little did we know at the time how critical this would be later in our trip.
We learned that Fairbanks was purportedly the coldest city in the U.S with a population of at least 10,000. The city doesn’t receive crazy amounts of snowfall annually, but its location in the Tanana River Valley causes cold air to accumulate in the city, while warm rises up the hills to the north. This has led to Fairbanks experiencing one of the biggest temperature inversions on the planet. Mean temperatures in January are -8.3 degrees F and conversely 69.2 degrees F in July. We got some rain early during our visit, but generally the temperatures were comfortably mild.
We hadn’t stayed in the same campground longerr than days since leaving Issaquah, WA back in early May, so after two weeks, we were anxious to get moving again. By studying the visitor center pamphlets, we created a basic plan which would take us to Denali National Park, Palmer (city about an hour north of Anchorage), and Valdez (remember the Exxon-Valdez oil tanker spill?)
