Fairbanks Pioneer Park

We enjoy historical villages, from Skansen (Stockholm) to Colonial Williamsburg, and we enjoyed Fairbanks Pioneer Park despite the city's relative youth...dating only from the later 19th century. In addition to numerous historic buildings, artifacts, photographs, and more, Pioneer Park was unique to us in that most of the old buildings housed current stores and businesses.

Retro camper parked outside

R

Pullman car for President's Harding's visit

Interesting alabaster windows 

Street scene

Old-fashioned way

Excellent docents here and there

Excellent turn of the century photo

First ascent of Denali/McKinley, quite an achievement
for the time

Most impressive was the stern-wheeler...early 20th century, but
the real thing

Amply explained and documented

Build from design...

And housing a dozen or more of the best models/dioramas we've seen

Engine room

A great treat

Chena Hot Springs

From the Denali campground, we drove on further north on August 19th to Fairbanks, by now under the guidance of our weather and aurelia borealis websites. After stops for food and fuel, we headed on toward Chena Hot Springs, where, we were informed, there would be a decent chance of seeing the northern lights that night. Chena Hot Springs is about an hour's drive beyond Fairbanks, and it is sort of a Fairbanks thing, one of the two or three top tourist destinations in the area. So we read. In our estimation, it was a small partially enclosed hot springs, not very inviting, surrounded by motel buildings, a restaurant, and a very large number of, um, things, many whimsical, that had to do with life in the far north. We were not amused, and grew even less amused later that evening when the clouds gathered and there were no northern lights to be seen. Prospects changed overnight, worsening, and we decided to spend a few more nights at a nice B&B in Fairbanks, to rest, relax, reconsider, and, of course, reorganize.

Among the interesting artifacts laying around

Snow coaches, out of season

A DC-6; interestingly, one was flying in and out of the Fairbanks airport
throughout our time there; 1950s airliner, last of the big prop jobs

Lobby artifacts

Excalibur

Cool spring

More artifacts

Alas, this was as close as I got to a shot of the outdoor hot springs

Not knee-high by the 4th of July

The Aurarium...an ice museum...we passed

Departure the next day; as you can see, at this latitude the trees already

are changing; we'll be leaf-peeping all the way to San Diego!

Denali, 2025

We had visited Denali on our 2002 Alaska trip and had had such a good visit that we didn't want its memories over-written. The mountain is notoriously cloud-covered, and the bus ride back to the closest visitor center is seldom rewarded with the sight of any more than its lower slopes. But we got to see the whole mountain, and some animals too, in 2002. For 2025, we just did the drive toward Fairbanks, enjoying some excellent views of the south side of the mountain, and spending the night in the main Denali NP campground. 

Leaving the state fairgrounds, near Anchorage, the alpine views to
the south and east weren't bad

Nice highway views of Denali, many miles away, from the south

Clouds spilling over a distant range

Valley view

Street scene

Beetle-kill in the park was some of the most extensive we've seen

Us before Denali, 2002

Caribou

Grizzly at a comfortable distance across the meadow

Mama and two moose cubs crossing a lake

Denali as we saw it in 2002

Visitor center chart showing the mountain's
days of visibility that summer