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Alaska’s Big 5

These are the Big 5 animals that every visitor to Alaska tries to see. We did not see any of them live or relatively close on our trip. So we had to settle for this…

Fairbanks Alaska

Alaska vacation day 13

We spent one day and two nights in Fairbanks, especially hoping to see the Aurora Borealis. But it was not to be. We did not see them. However, there is plenty else to see in Fairbanks.

Growden Park, baseball stadium for Alaska Goldpanners semi-pro baseball team.

My hero Tom Seaver pitched for the Goldpanners in 1964 and 1965 before becoming a professional and subsequently a Hall of Famer. Greatest player in Goldpanners history.

The Goldpanners are known for the Midnight Sun Game every June. The game starts at 10 PM and the lights are not turned on.

University of Alaska Fairbanks is a beautiful campus.

International Arctic Research Center and National Weather Service.

Black Brant IX Rocket display.

Poker Flat Research Range is the world’s only scientific rocket launching facility owned by a university. Poker Flat is operated by the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute under contract to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (in Virginia), which is part of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

It is the largest land-based rocket research range in the world and the only high-latitude rocket range in the United States. In addition to launching sounding rockets, Poker Flat is home to many scientific instruments designed to study the arctic atmosphere and ionosphere.

On the campus of UAF, the Museum of the North is a pretty nice museum about the cultural and natural history of Alaska.

These are Russian Orthodox Church items from the 18th and 19th century – bishops’s vestment, altar lamps, chairs.

More Russian items, most notably the silver plate brass samovar.

Early 20th century women’s items made from moosehide.

Koyukon Athabascan chief moosehide jacket, 1962.

Fish trap – the fish go in but they can’t get out.

Copper nugget found in 1936 during placer mining, weighs 5,495 pounds.

This blockhouse was the first structure built in the Kolmakovsky Redoubt which was created in 1841 by Russia. Eight other structures were built at the redoubt before Russia sold Alaska to the USA in 1867. The redoubt was established as a trading fort that exploited high-quality fur resources.

2nd Avenue, one of the main streets in downtown Fairbanks.

A less famous dog sled race starts and finishes in Fairbanks. The Yukon Quest is a 1,000 mile race. The more famous Iditarod race is about 1,049 miles from Anchorage (actually Willow) to Nome.

Monument honoring Athabascans, the first inhabitants of the lands of Alaska.

Overlooking the Chena River in downtown Fairbanks with a marker indicating the high water mark of the flood of 1967.

More lush beautiful colors around Fairbanks. These will be gone in a matter of a few weeks.

This dog sled scene is hanging from the ceiling of the Pump House Restaurant we ate at on our last night in Alaska. This sculpture honors two former chefs at the restaurants. One of them died of a heart attack while taking his dogs on a long run. The other one also died of a heart attack after moving to Alaska from the East Coast.

Among other vintage antique displays in the Pump House, these old record players with many record rolls.

I was in awe of actually being at and seeing the Arctic Ocean! Nothing particularly amazing to look at – it looks like the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans, maybe a little colder. It was just knowing that this is the Arctic! So I took pictures from our hotel room over several hours to watch the sky change.