Fairbanks

From Denali National Park, we headed to Fairbanks, Alaska’s 4th largest city. We were naively expecting the weather to be in line with all the other places that we had visited, however we had not quite counted on the mercury hitting 30! It was soooooo hot!!! We celebrated Mum’s actual birthday (she must win a prize for spinning her birthday out the longest – it was in April!) with a lovely dinner at a restaurant overlooking the river, but still needing an umbrella at 10:30 at night because it was just too hot in the sun! And given that the sun doesn’t go down until after midnight, you can’t just wait it out.

While in Fairbanks we visited Pioneer Park, a sort of dumping ground for any historical buildings that were getting in the way of development throughout the city. We also went to a viewing spot for the Aleyeska pipeline which travels 800 miles, about half underground and half overground, from Prudhoe Bay in the north to Valdez in the south, carrying countless barrels of oil since 1977. Our final stop in Fairbanks was the Museum of the North, a great building and a fantastic museum