Since we spent 5 days in Fairbanks I decided it might be nice to give everyone a brief idea of the city. Firstly, we had no intention of doing anything more than passing through Fairbanks and maybe checking out the Pipeline/Haul Road. Cities are not where we are coming from when it comes to Alaska. That’s why we moved there in the first place—to get away from cities.
After 35 years there has definitely been an incredible change in Fairbanks. What we saw back then was a “one horse town” somewhat out of the frontier days. The pipeline was just starting to be built and pipe fitters, welders, construction workers and anyone else who thought they could make some good money were lined up and waiting at the union halls. Rumors spread that people were abandoning their children in Fairbanks in order to work on the pipeline. Crime was rampant.
Today, with an exploding population of 35,000 and a metro area of 99,000, Fairbanks is replete with expressways, big box stores (Sam’s, Wal Mart, Home Depot, Lowes), fast food operations (McDonalds, KFC, Subway), museums and lots of traffic. It is the home of the University of Alaska Fairbanks , Ft. Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base. Unlike Anchorage that is surrounded by mountains and Cook Inlet, Fairbanks is surrounded by rolling hills. Its Tanana Valley is an important agricultural center. But like any other place in Alaska, you can go 5 miles out of town and you are in the wilds. At least we were able to take advantage of that aspect of the area.
Now to our day. We made it to Anchor Point! But that’s for tomorrow’s post.
After 2 gorgeous, sunny, hot (yes, 70 is actually really hot here) days, the overcast skies and rains came. As we traveled down the Seward and Sterling Highways we were amazed at the quality of the roads (well paved and mostly 4 lane) and the amount of traffic both into Anchorage and going down the Kenai Peninsula. Coming out of Anchorage, we were struck by how wonderful it was to see Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm once more. Unfortunately, the views were diminished by cloud cover. Hopefully we’ll catch them on the way back. After a grocery stop in Soldotna, we headed for Anchor Point.
Even though it was raining, we decided to make a side trip to Portage Lake to see Portage Glacier and the blue icebergs. We hadn’t been there since 1977 and remember a lake full of blue icebergs and even standing on and under the glacier. Today the glacier has receded to the point that you need to take a boat across the lake to see it. There were very few blue icebergs left. The scene was a little sad though still beautiful. I did get a shot of Burns Glacier that is adjacent to and slightly in front of Portage Glacier.
Blue iceberg on Portage Lake
Burns Glacier on Portage Lake
The clouds cleared and the rain stopped as we made it to our campsite on the Anchor River. I did manage to get a shot of an eagle flying overhead.
Eagle flying over the fields in front of our campsite
Tomorrow I’ll talk about Anchor Point, our old homestead and why “you can’t go home again”.