Alaska

The Interior and Fairbanks

In Talkeetna, I boarded an Alaska Railroad train for the second leg of my trip – on to Fairbanks, past the Denali National Park. The trip from Talkeetna takes 8 hours, through increasingly sub-arctic vegetation, and the Alaska Range gracing the windows of passenger cars.

Traveling along the rail road can give you the false impression that people live everywhere in the interior - the immediate area seen from the train is often sprinkled with small towns and occasional lonely houses. Don’t be fooled, though - it’s only because the railroad is here, and the only highway around runs nearby as well. Very few people want to intentionally cut themselves from any lines to civilization. Beyond the railroad, it’s Nothingness.

Stay in these Denali Park lodges and pay through the nose

The noisy families got off in Denali National Park, and the quieter and more mature audiences continued on north, in an almost empty train:

Mnt. Denali can be seen about 20% of the year. This was one of the 20 percent. The entire trip was blessed with the weather that was actually getting better. It got so much better, in fact, that we could see the massive mountain all the way near Fairbanks. Indeed, on a good day, the highest peak in North America can be seen from hundreds of miles away.

When it comes to traveling Alaska Railroad, you can spend more money riding Gold Star class (equivalent to First Class), but I found coach perfectly acceptable. Perhaps because with very few people, I could move around, sit wherever I wanted to, get the best seat in the dome car, or stand in between the cars and take in the views. There is a snack car and a restaurant on-board, and since I pretty much lived on this train for one day, I got both lunch and dinner there. For me, of course, traveling the rail was a means to an end – I needed to get to the next major airport.

Gold Star has its perks - a better food menu, and everyone gets their own glass dome window. Gold Star cars also have open-air balconies on the upper level. All this comes at a co$t.

Fairbanks - outskirts of the Arctic Cirlce. July 2nd. 9PM. Hot as a crotch. It’s bad enough that the sun does not even think of going down this late in the evening, it is actually clear, dry and hot, pushing the day’s temperature to 80F. Well, dragon poop, I am not traveling into the Arctic for *this* crap! This is not a fluke of weather. Fairbanks is in the part of the interior that experiences some of the most extreme temperature fluctuations on Earth. It can hit -60F in winter, and +90F in summer – a 150 degree difference.

The owner of the place where I was staying before my flight to Barrow picked me up at the rail depot. She told me - as she was turning the AC on in her car - “this is why I live here, it gets so hot that you forget about the cold winter.” Ironically, the only time I had to wear my short-sleeved t-shirt is in the Arctic.

Fairbanks is a very modern college town, with some of the most advanced scientific research taking place at the local University of Alaska campus (UAF). I had a full day ahead of me, trying to see the campus, get back to the hotel, get to the airport, go through the always fun airport nonsense, fly to Barrow, get to the hotel in Barrow, and finally find something to eat in Barrow.

One thing that I hate when traveling to new places is arriving there in total darkness. It’s totally disorienting – you just don’t know where the heck you are and what’s around you until the next morning. No such problem in Alaska this time of year. You look at the watch and think – “Oh, it’s 8PM. The sunset is at around 12AM. I got time before it, well, doesn’t get dark anyway.”

Falling asleep in Fairbanks near a major road is nearly impossible – students with their motorcycles and souped up cars raise hell into the late hours of the night, where “night” is a relative term. The fact that it was bright out well after midnight didn’t help either. I was glad I had to put up with this for just one night, and I was sufficiently tired by the 8-hour rail trip to get some shuteye.

Fairbanks - spread out and hot

I woke up the next morning to my first of the three days and nights that would never see the sun go down. The concept of “night” was now completely gone. Night is the new day. The next “day” was even hotter in Fairbanks, with temperatures crossing 85 degrees. Fairbanks, with its surrounding green-ish hills, and dry hot weather, sometimes just feels like LA. Including the kind of a bus system:

You don’t want me to ride the bus. I get it.

After walking a few long blocks under the scorching sun, trying to find a bus stop, and then figuring out the bus system with the barely readable schedule, I decided I was not going to put up with 45 minute to 1 hour service gaps, so I grabbed a cab to the University campus.

Foreground - Geophysical Institute (research of Aurora Borealis, permafrost, etc). Background - Arctic Research Center (climate change research)

Since the campus is a spit away from the Arctic Circle line, it’s a place of fascinating studies of everything Arctic - Aurora Borealis, animals and plants in the Arctic, housing design in extreme cold, geophysics, health in the Arctic, and climate change. The latter has its own building which is only a few years old (built by U.S. and Japan in 1999, it’s the International Arctic Research Center).

From the elevation that the campus is on, I could see the Alaska Range and mount Denali, incredibly enough:

Denali is to to left (and seen much better in real life, even from 200 miles away)

Fairbanks is known as the “Gateway to the Arctic”. But I didn’t want the gate. Open the gate, yo. I want to go the Arctic. I wanted to go to a place where there is only one weather forecast – cold as a bastard. Thanks to Alaska Airlines mileage plan, my trip to Barrow was on the house….

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