FAIRBANKS
How does one arrive at a sense of place?
There is a special scent. Wildflowers and a tangle of grasses. Damp. Cool. And the gray of rain clouds ringing a pale sun. Jeanne, a Lyft driver and friend of our host (they were both born here, in Fairbanks), picks us up from the small airport at about 11:00 p.m. It’s quiet. The sky is dusk-like and the streets deserted. The night is almost warm — maybe 70 degrees. Jeanne tells us this is the place in Alaska with the warmest summers and coldest winters. Every car around here has an electrical plug hanging out of the grill (the 'Fairbanks Tongue?') to heat the engine on cold winter nights, but right now it feels like spring in Vermont or Colorado.
We wind our way quite a distance through sparsely populated areas, to the house where we will stay, described on the Airbnb site as "in town." It's on a quiet street beside a small lake in the middle of an industrial area surrounded by fields and wooded areas. The houses ringing the lake are modest and well tended, with broad, neatly mown lawns. The streets and driveways are clotted with cars, campers, pick-up trucks, and an occasional snowplow. There is no visible sign of a "town." We're both thinking the same thing: Just how far will we need to walk to find a grocery store?!
We sleep well and long under fluffy comforters in the cool and bright Alaskan night, and wake late. Lisa, our host, has provided us with good coffee which we use for a jump-start, then we set off walking to look for food. Google maps says there a convenience store up the highway not too far. Before we get there, though, we see a cafe! With several cars parked outside. Always a good indicator. The Hot Spot looks to be popular with locals — your basic and very friendly neighborhood cafe. The Sunday morning special: Eggs Benedict and reindeer sausage! We feel a lot better about things, and look forward to getting plenty of good exercise after doing an excessive amount of driving in Albuquerque.
After breakfast, we hoof it on up the highway to the — uh — convenience store. A sign on the door says "CLOSED SATURDAY & SUNDAY." We promptly redesignate it the "INconvenience store." We also learn that the local bus route — that could potentially take us to the Fred Meyer or Safeway to stock up — does not run on Sundays. And by now we're validated that it is a very long walk to "town."
As we walk, we notice strange markers above fire hydrants, service boxes, low walls along the street. What? Imagine being a snowplow driver in the dead of winter!
Back to the Hot Spot we go to buy a large carry-out order of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and salad, and a piece of apple pie. And, while the convenience store is inconveniently closed, the liquor store is not, so we score a bottle of nice red and head back. We'll have a fine dinner "at home," watch something on Netflix, and start over on Monday morning.
We do, indeed, figure out the buses that fairly well cover the city – and are free if you are over 60! We have three days to explore — which probably is not enough, but we'll do what we can. The bus drivers are very friendly here and seem to know most of the riders. One thing we can do is ride the different bus routes to get a better understanding of the place, as we've done in other places. We learn that Fairbanks is like lots of frontier towns: spread out all over the place!
After a Monday morning breakfast of biscuits and gravy, more reindeer sausage, and sourdough pancakes (if we keep eating like this, we’re going to be in trouble!) at the Diner Cafe, we hop a bus to Creamer's Field — once a large, working dairy farm, now a wildlife preserve of fields and marshes populated by many species of birds and animals. And, yes, the owner really was named Creamer! We walk about three peaceful miles through the forest and along bogs and streams, watching large flocks of sandhill cranes ripple the tall grasses, lift and cruise over the fields; and listening to the mysterious sounds of hidden creatures.
On the way back, we stop at the Black Spruce Brewery that sits along a highway a couple of blocks from the house. We're wondering if they have food, as well as brew. Well, technically, they don't; but a food truck is pulled up along the side door, and you can order pizzas! Which we do, along with two of the local best. And I bought an Alaska t-shirt. Can't go home without an Alaska t-shirt!
On another day we visit the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), which sits on a bluff overlooking the city and valley. The museum is a stunning presentation of art, science, history, and culture. Oscar, the huge stuffed grizzly bear and a mummified Steppe Bison (only one in the world) are awe inspiring. Oscar, as you will see, is a very popular guy around town. And the art — ranging from ancient to contemporary, and local native to internationally significant – is beautifully curated.
A walk around the central part of the campus takes us to the Wood Center (student union) and the Arts building, which we enter through the foyer to the performance auditorium — and I go off wandering through the halls, looking at student art displays. Perry comes to get me. He wants to show me someone he once knew!
Back to the auditorium — the Charles W. Davis Auditorium. And there, in a glass case, is an oil painting of Charles. Perry points at it. Turns out Charles was once the Music Director at the Wilkes' family church in Albuquerque, St. Luke's Lutheran, when Perry was in junior high. He remembered that Davis had left for someplace in Alaska but never heard any more about him. Davis passed on in 1994, but Fairbanks obviously offered more fertile ground than Albuquerque for his talents. He is revered for his musical and leadership contributions to the university and the community over a 30-year period.
Our last night in Fairbanks, we find the Jazz Bistro. It’s downtown, near the Transit Center (where all the buses originate), so will make it easy to get a taxi back to the apartment! Unfortunately, we are tired enough from our trek (we’ve become obsessed with getting our 10,000+ steps a day), and we need to be up very early in the morning to catch our train to Anchorage, that we can’t make it until the live jazz begins at 830pm. But the food is fantastic — roasted pork and vegetables with black beans — Caribbean fare. We find ourselves speaking Spanish with the charming Cuban-born owner, who swears he’ll visit us in Kino.* We are suddenly connected in another way here in Alaska, where you find transplants from all parts of the world — cabbies from Honolulu, waiters from Serbia and Macedonia, tour guides from Croatia, restaurant owners from Cuba…
Jeanne, who collected us from the airport, picks us up on a rainy August 1 morning and drops us at the Alaska Railroad Depot in Fairbanks for a long, lovely ride to Anchorage.
THE TRAIN
It's a full day's ride from Fairbanks to Anchorage. And it's beautiful. Yes, there are long stretches of mostly firs and birch, but the excitement is suddenly seeing a moose or a stream filled with salmon. The skys were gray and ocassionally rainy, with streaks of sunlight breaking through from time to time.
The odd thing is that we will be back on this very same train a little later for a four-day trip to Denali! We might have planned it a little differently, had we known we would not take the ferry and visit Fairbanks instead, etcetera, etcetera... But, as we mentioned, this trip has required flexibility. So we will "doubly" enjoy the train! And we'll tell you more about it the next time around! For now, just a few pictures to give you a feeling.
ANCHORAGE
We collect our bags and find a taxi (the driver's from Somalia) to take us to our Airbnb rental. Finding places to stay in Alaska during the height of tourist season had been quite a challenge; and we have had to opt for places with public transportation nearby rather than be in easy walking distance of the center. This is a car-centric place. Most people who visit here either have driven up the AlCan or rent a vehicle once they get here. Walking seems not to be so common, and we often find ourselves walking along highways with no sidewalks.
We’ve staying south of the downtown and mid-town areas of this, another spread-out city, on the edge of Lake Spenard, a base for small sea-planes that continually land and take off throughout the day. One of my take-aways from Anchorage will be the roar of small plane engines…along with the sounds of unmuffled motorcycles and trucks, and jets from the nearby airport.
Anchorage will be where we spend time between other places — Homer, Denali, and Seward, where we will hop the Holland American cruise ship to Vancouver on August 18. We will get to know Anchorage well.
An early task, then, is to figure out the bus system — the PeopleMover. The map is downloadable from the internet, and we spot the bus stops near our place. Then we begin walking toward the uptown area to find a place for breakfast and get a feel for things.
We find breakfast at Gwennies Old Alaska Restaurant. Seated next to a bear’s very large, um, behind, we order one breakfast to split (thank goodness!). It's a mountain of an omelet — maybe four or five eggs over a pile of reindeer sausage, with grits and biscuits. We cannot eat it all, between the two of us!
Onward a few blocks we find something we had planned to look for later — The Writer’s Block Bookstore, Cafe, and performance venue. We were just walking along, looked across the street, and there it was! It’s owned by Vered, the daughter of dear Albuquerque friend Tony Mares, who passed away a few years ago. His wife, Carolyn Meyer, had reminded us to look for the bookstore. She had been there just a week earlier presenting her one-woman, stand-up comedy act, “Don’t Call Me Young Lady!” Carolyn is a well-known, widely published author of literature for children and young adults; but she has embarked on a completely new performance career. We are very sorry we missed the show!
In the city, we visit the amazing Anchorage Museum — a huge collection of historic and contemporary art, performance and educational spaces for kids — in downtown Anchorage.
We spend a couple of hours in the fascinating “Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition” exhibit, pondering the horror of being ice-bound and starving to death in the frozen Arctic. And we ran into Oscar again!
And after a few hours of “museum walk,” we find a little respite in the “Seed Lab” viewing space, filled with the most comfy bag chairs! They're easy to stay in – and snooze – and hard to get out of!
It’s “First Friday” in Anchorage, with all kinds of arts and performance events in the downtown area; but we choose to go back to Vered’s place for dinner and music by Eric Lytle from northern California, who is doing a tour around the area here. The Writer’s Block is a first-class book store, the food is great, and Eric’s music is fantastic!
Vered is busy tending to business when Perry asks her if she has anything written by E.A. Mares.
“Uhh, could I get back to you in a minute?” she asks, with a long, curious look.
We manage to monopolize her for about ten minutes to reminisce about her dad and learn a bit about the difficulties of living and doing business in Alaska, where the governor just cut about 40% of funding for all sorts of vitally important programs. It seems to be the main subject of conversation and headline stories in all the papers; and there's a recall drive now underway. I can imagine it is traumatic. You see everywhere the evidence of a proud, energetic population focused on caring for the environment, social justice, hard work, and self sufficiency, with a passion for this place where they live. But it can be a tough environment; and when the heart is cut out of the economy, it’s likely to get tougher.
On Saturday we take the bus into the center again, spend some time at the sizable Saturday open-air market where you can buy almost any kind of Alaskan artifact or food…with a little thrown in from other places, like Mexico!
We don’t have a frenzied agenda here. It’s more like, “What do you think we should do now?” We’re not booking small plane flights over the glaciers or long treks through the Alaskan wilderness. Maybe had we done this twenty years ago…
So, after a lazy hour or so on a park bench overlooking the bay, we book tickets to a comedy called, "Boeing, Boeing," at Cyrano’s Theatre, and have a lovely dinner of salmon, risotto, and spinach salad, with a nice bottle of red wine, at the Yes Bistro across the street before the show. We have, indeed, already chalked up 13,000+ steps for the day, and call a cab to get us back to bed by 11:30 p.m.! It's still very light outside as we nod off, but not as much as Fairbanks which is farther north.
It’s Sunday. We’ll visit the nearby airport to check up on an art installation there for our friend, the artist, Dana Boussard. It’s nice to have this sort of real-time connection with a place.
Tomorrow we take a bus to Homer, where we hear Alaskans like to retire. Sounds good to us! We'll be back in Anchorage two more times before exiting Alaska. Next up: Homer and Denali. — CJK
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*Cannot tell you how many cards we’ve handed out throughout our travels, and how many people have said “We’ll be there.” We never hand out cards to “advertise,” rather, it’s a way to connect; and while we surely would welcome visits from those we meet along the way, they are yet to happen!