12 Hours in the Booming City of Fairbanks

Did I say booming city? I guess "booming" wouldn't be the correct term to describe it although Fairbanks is the second largest city in the state of Alaska. Second only to Anchorage. I looked up Fairbanks on Wikipedia and according to Wikipedia the population of the place is about 34,000 people (that's only 12,000 more that Selma). That sounds about right. Needless to say Fairbanks wasn't toooo exciting of a place, although that's not to say that I was ECSTATIC to be there.

Fairbanks had a grocery store.

Fairbanks is 120 miles away from Denali, where I've been staying the past month.

Fairbanks has the nearest grocery store to Denali.

So we left on Monday afternoon on the 4:00pm train to Fairbanks. It was a four hour gorgeous train ride (yes, 4 hours to travel 120 miles=crawling at about 30 miles an hour, so good thing it was gorgeous). We arrived around 8pm, and knew that we had to get back on the train the next morning at 8am to make it back to Denali the next day. So we had a grand total of 12 hours in Fairbanks and decided there was no point to getting a motel or hostel and instead decided we'd explore Fairbanks in that time.

And we did! We pretty much walked from one end to the other. Not much was open other than some grocery stores, we caught a late night movie, and found a Denny's open 24 hours. (Also known as "the Northernmost Denny's in the World") Other than that we just walked.

The weirdest part about walking around downtown Fairbanks in the wee hour of the morning was what a ghost town it felt like. Normally if I'm in California and out late at night, things are often deserted...but it's also usually dark so it makes sense why it's deserted. In Fairbanks it could easily have been early evening (judging by the sunlight) but there was absolutely nobody around town. It was like a horror movie waiting to happen. Except I wasn't afraid of gangs...or being mugged....instead I wouldn' have been surprised if at any moment zombies creeped out from the buildings and tried to eat the last four people left in the town of Fairbanks. Flashes of "I Am Legend" played in my head and I kinda wished I brought a dog.

Overall it was a fun trip and SOOO nice to get out of Denali for a day (as much as I'm loving it) and be able to go to a store and buy things like toothpaste and snacks and fresh fruit. I'm super impressed by people who live here throughout the year and have to travel 120 miles to go to a grocery store. It makes me think about how many of them are in southern california. When I was at Chapman we could choose between Albertson's, Ralphs, Fresh n Easy, Trader Joes, all within a couple miles. And just a few more miles you could be at a Whole Foods or Sprouts or Mothers. Seriously? That's just ridiculous.

Anyways, I'm hping to plan a biking trip through that park pretty soon. A coworker and I are trying to mke it happen so I'll keep you updated on that!

Happy fourth of July!! While you all are enjoying your fireworks I will not be... :( That's one dowside of working in a national park. No fireworks allowed. (can't really blame them) They don't seem to be as big of a deal up here anyways because let's face it....how cool can fireworks really be if it's not dark outside?? Not as cool.

So enjoy all of your fourth of July celebrations!!!! Have fun!