Aurora Borealis

We booked a tour to see the northern lights with ‘Face the outdoors’ ‘ and highly recommend it. He took us to his house miles out of Fairbanks. On the way he was explaining to us the benefits of having a private field and how often the public will keep their car lights on which hindered your view. As we stopped by a lake where the lights were dancing he pointed to a car already there whose lights were still on and said “see what I mean?” then ‘OOPs that’s my Mother!’ In fairness she was just turning her lights off at the time.

We had the comfort of sitting inside his amazing home with snacks hot drinks to keep us warm waiting for the lights to arrive and give us a show taking photographs, and then going back inside. Mike would stay out to watch for the lights to fire up again. The lights move about in the sky like Fairies or lace curtain floating. Quite surreal. I could hear coyotes in the background. It was a beautiful experience.

On our way back we saw six cow moose and the bull just sitting out in the field. It was amazing but couldn’t take photographs because we would have to do it with a flash and that would’ve disturbed them.

The other days we spent driving around and saw some beautiful scenery and strange sights. There was more than one house with a plane part attached to it. The roads are so straight as Alaska is relatively new country. It was sold to the States in 1878. The French also wanted to buy it but the Russians wanted to have a friendly country to help them protect against the enemy Britain. Well that didn’t work out quite as expected!

One unexpected highlight was the Antique Automobile Museum, which was amazing. The atmosphere was created, even better by the black-and-white photographs and mannikins with the fashions of the day and had 95 cars from 1898 to pre war. There were also men who would demonstrate some of the cars and show how they worked. Very informative and very interesting.

We also took in an ice hockey game. Unfortunately the home team lost. Fort Wainwright Air Force was nearby so just after I saw three moose a few fighter jets whizzed by.

I think if I was to come back or for recommendations, I would say come in the first or second week in September not the last because most things are closed up. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves driving through the amazing scenery. People were very friendly. Would also not recommend ‘7 Gables’ the place that we stayed in but we’re too lazy to move out off. We would probably recommend more than a couple of days in Denali and the Primrose B and B was lovely. Denali is beautiful and we loved the Totem place restaurant.