We arrived in Fairbanks early in the evening. It seems like the sun never sets here. It was bright and sunny into the evening and when we went to bed at 1:00 am it was still light.
Fairbanks began when a fortune hunter E.T. Barnette, planning to start a trading post, met with low water on the Chena River in 1901 and it forced him to unload a sternwheeler (Lavelle Young) cargo consisting of $20,000 worth of trading goods short of his destination. Shortly after he had set up the trading post where he unloaded, Flex Pedro and Tom Gilmore found gold in the nearby hills. The city of Fairbanks, as he called it, became an attraction for gold seekers and visionaries, characters and people with character who came to stay.
We stayed st the Fairbanks Princess hotel. The property was not as large as the Denali Princess Lodge, however it was very nice and comfortable. It had two very nice restaurants and a bar. The hotel is situated on the banks of the Chena River and has a walkway next to the river.
The next morning, as part of the Princess package, we had a very well done tour on the Sternwheeler Riverboat Cruise
In the afternoon we signed up for a tour of Fairbanks. The main objective was to see the Pipeline. We first toured the City, than the Pipeline and finally the University of Alaska Museum.
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