On Location: Alaska

Fairbanks and Denali National Park

By Gray Shealy

When I touched down in America’s final frontier, I had visited my 50th American state—a monumental travel milestone a longtime in the making! It was a perfect finale to officially close out pandemic-era travel, after I had done a late 2020 roadtrip to finally visit all of the states in the American Midwest and Northwest that I had never had the time to see.

Part 1: The Center of Alaska : North Pole, Chena River State Park, & Fairbanks

Obviously, when heading to the Arctic, one should seek out Santa Claus (There’s a town outside of Fairbanks called “North Pole”)! Our visit to the holiday namesake town was a bit lackluster, but hiking the Angel Rocks of the gorgeous (and remote) Chena River spruce forests and a stay nearby in a log cabin fit the part — as it is the most northerly place I’ve been to on the planet! Fairbanks is near to the oddly-unsecured Trans-Alaska pipeline, and combined with an excellent museum on Arctic culture at the university, life here in this 31,000-person city is as expected: quiet, isolated, and independent.

Part 2: Alaska Safari: Denali (not ‘McKinley’) National Park

The spectacular crown of our long weekend in Alaska was undoubtedly Denali National Park, about 120 miles south of Fairbanks. The enormous park is the size of Massachusetts, and home to Denali (no longer known as “Mt McKinley” as I had recalled it from grade school), North America’s highest peak at +20,000ft. One can only take an organised bus deep into the park, and for good reason: we were—at one point—10 yards from a grizzly bear on the road. Our adventure felt like a fortuitous safari where all the wildlife came out on showy display: moose, caribou/reindeer, arctic squirrels, snowy ptarmigans…. It was peak Fall colour in the park, oddly different than the deciduous shows at lower latitudes, with carpets of yellow birch and red dogwood dominating the colour spectrum. At the road’s end, the great peaks of Denali itself even came out for a quick peek. Lucky we were—the guide told us —as so many Alaskans have still never seen their great mountain on a rare vista coming out from behind the clouds.

Part 3: Alaska Lights: Flying through the Aurora Borealis

As luck would have it, it was mostly cloudy our few days in the North, rendering the chances of seeing the 50,000ft Northern Lights moot. After all, Aurora season has just started up again (this was written in August) now that the sun is finally setting in the Arctic’s end of summer. However, on the night of our departure, the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute predicted that chances of Aurora activity would be high. Sure enough, for over an hour while we traversed the air southeast at 30,000ft across the Yukon Territories, we witnessed the wisps of the Northern Lights, dancing about like smoky tendrils outside our windows. It was as if the flight path was made for the perfect view. The camera lens only intensified the vista: to the naked eye, they appeared a mossy grey, but to the camera, they glowed phosphorescent green. This magical show was a perfect ending to our weekend in the far polar North.

Transit: In and Out of Fairbanks International Airport

Stay: Airbnb, Polar Luxe Log Home

See: Denali National Park (2 hours South of Fairbanks) and Museum of the North in Fairbanks.

Syllogi’s ‘On Location’ is a series of trip reports reflecting on our personal travels, as we research and experience the bounty the world has on offer.