*FAIRBANKS * AK: Aurora * Oil * Polar Bears!*

Mom came to visit the first week of April (April 1-6). We spent the first half of the trip in Fairbanks (this post) and the second half of the trip in Seward (next post).

FAIRBANKS AK:  THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

For those of you who don't know, Fairbanks is much farther North than Anchorage; its latitude is 64° N. Anchorage AK is 61° N.   Minneapolis MN is 44° N.    Seattle WA is 47° N. The Earth's Magnetic North Pole is 83° N.  The Northern Lights are visible between 62-70° N.

We stayed at a great b&b called the Aurora Borealis Lodge located at the top of Cleary Summit, 20 minutes North of Fairbanks. The guest lodge (behind my mom and I in the photo above) contains 4 rooms, each with a Northern-facing window, ideal for viewing the Northern Lights from inside. The lodge has a walkie-talkie system that would seem to make Aurora-viewing fail-proof (however, we managed to miss it the first night).

We spent two days romping around in snow shoes searching for meese.

We had dinner at a great local brewery (both nights) and saw some spectacular Northern Lights (above). 

The Northern Lights (also called the Aurora Borealis) are a naturally-occurring phenomenon. Their explanation requires a vague understanding of geo-magnetics, so I dedicated a separate post to the topic.

NPR recently featured an interesting article on a 2-minute video of the Northern Lights recently posted on youtube; click this link for the article. Click this link (or the caption below) to go straight to the video.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline (Also in Fairbanks)

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs a distance of 800 miles and transports a maximum of 2.136 million barrels of oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields (in Northernmost Alaska) to Valdez AK, a Southern port town. It was commissioned in 1977 by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (a partnership between major oil companies: BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, and Cheveron Corporation). 

We also drove down into town to check out the University of AK- Fairbanks; this proved yet another failed moose-sighting attempt; however, we did get some wild-life viewing in by way of ice sculpture. :)