Fairbanks: Three Breakfast Options

I know breakfast is optional for some travelers, but for me it’s a crucial way to start the day off right. If you’re like me, and you find yourself in Fairbanks, here are three breakfast options for your consideration — two with plenty of seating space for a leisurely meal and one roadside take-away truck.

Lu Lu’s Bread & Bagels: Choose from an array of fresh-baked bagels with butter, jam or cream cheese or go for a toasted bagel sandwich — there are both breakfast and lunch options. Lu Lu’s also sells bulk bagels and loaves of fresh bread (including a daily special), and the coffee comes courtesy of the Alaska-based Kaladi Brothers.

Alaska Coffee Roasting Co.: Another local roaster, Alaska Coffee Roasting Co. also delivers tasty food for breakfast and lunch, including quiches, fresh pastries and flatbreads. I like the “breakfast pockets” filled with eggs, potatoes, cheese and more.

Sunrise Bagel & Espresso: There are at least a couple of locations for this coffee cart mini-chain — I’ve been to the one just outside the Best Western Chena River Lodge on Airport Way and thoroughly enjoyed my bagel sandwich and a latte. Perfect for a quick take-away before you hit the highway or head out for a day of Fairbanks sight-seeing.

Photo Friday: It’s Iditarod Eve

The Iditarod, Alaska’s 1000-mile dogsled race, begins tomorrow. In the spirit of long-distance mushing races, I figured I’d pull out a couple of my shots from the Yukon Quest start line for the occasion.

Can we go yet? Can we go yet? Can we go yet?

Let'sgolet'sgolet'sgolet'sgo!

Introducing ‘Mammoths and Mastodons’ at the Anchorage Museum

Exciting news from the Anchorage Museum: a new traveling exhibit, Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age, opens tomorrow. The displays were put together by Chicago’s Field Museum, and they include skulls, skeletons, and fleshed-out replicas of the giant mammals, as well as human art and artifacts from the Ice Age.

A visit costs $24 for adults, $21 for students, seniors and military personnel, and $17 for children under 12. The ticket also gets you into all of the museum’s permanent exhibits, including the excellent Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, a remarkable collection of artifacts from Alaska Native groups, arranged by region.

“Mammoths and Mastodons” is on until October 9. So if you’re visiting Anchorage this summer, that’s your inevitable rainy day taken care of, right?

My Favorite Fairbanks Hotel

Ordinarily I try to seek out and (where warranted) sing the praises of independent, locally-rooted properties when I travel.

It’s not that I necessarily have anything against the big chains — I’ve stayed at many a Super 8 when in need — but, well, I just don’t tend to think that they need my help. And it’s very rare that a chain spot truly stands out, really makes itself memorable.

One major exception to this rule is the Best Western Chena River Lodge, my go-to Fairbanks hotel.

My first stay here was born out of desperation. A friend and I had decided to take a detour up the Parks Highway to Fairbanks from Anchorage, instead of heading straight home to Whitehorse via the Glenn Highway and the Tok Cutoff. (Hey, what’s another few hundred miles, right?)

But we hadn’t made any plans or done any research about hotel options in Fairbanks, the drive had taken hours longer than expected thanks to icy roads, and we arrived in town tired, cranky, hungry and lost. We drove aimlessly around for awhile, selecting highway exits at random until, finally, I spotted the Best Western sign looming ahead of us. A familiar brand-name logo never looked so good.

The Northern Lights, At Last

My time at Slaven’s Roadhouse last week involved a few “firsts” for me — first time outdoors at -45, then -50, -53… — but easily the most exciting was my first proper look at the Northern Lights.

I’ve had two previous sightings. First, as a teenager partying on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, I spotted a dim green smudge on the horizon. Second, this past August in Fairbanks, I opted in to the aurora wake-up call offered at the River’s Edge Resort and stumbled out on to my patio in the brief darkness of an early, early Alaskan summer morning in time to watch a pale streak of green glowing just above the horizon. I’d have thought it was just an odd reflection of the city’s lights if I hadn’t seen it undulating, just slightly.

Both of those were a thrill, but I’d been waiting through the better part of two Yukon winters for the real show, and I arrived at Slaven’s counting on finally getting an eyeful.

A Few Shameless Northern Links

I’ve had a handful of northern stories appear elsewhere in the last few days.

Here they are:

I wrote a brief introduction to an annual ultra race for Matador Sports:
The Yukon Arctic Ultra: The World’s Toughest Race?

And I documented my recent beer-themed travels in two pieces for Matador Nights: The Beer Frontier: Binge Drinking in Alaska and the accompanying Guide to Beer Drinking in Alaska

Check ’em out!

Photo Friday: So Long, Slaven’s

Musher Hank DeBruin and his team pull out of Slaven's Roadhouse

The above photo is from Tuesday morning, when the last Yukon Quest musher left Slaven’s en route to Circle. I said my own goodbye just over 24 hours later — the volunteer team manning the dog drop was flown out to Fairbanks Wednesday afternoon — and I arrived home in Whitehorse last night.

I had a fantastic few days at Slaven’s. I’ll post more about the trip and the Quest soon.

Into Yukon-Charley National Preserve

Early tomorrow morning I’ll be jumping in the car and heading up to Fairbanks; the next morning, if all goes well weather-wise, I’ll be flying from Fairbanks into Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve in a National Parks Service plane.

We’ll be headed for Slaven’s Roadhouse, a 1930s-era log cabin built by Gold Rush miner Frank Slaven. Every winter, Slaven’s serves as a remote dog-drop on the Yukon Quest trail, and a team of NPS staffers from around Alaska provides water and hot meals to the mushers as they come through. This year I’ve joined the team.

Here’s where we’re headed:

I’ll be gone for at least a week, and in that time I’ll have zero phone/email/internet access (not to mention no plumbing…) so things will be quiet around here. I won’t be able to approve any new comments until I get back, so if you’ve tried to leave a note here on the site, don’t worry, I’m not ignoring you!

Slaven’s will be easily the most remote place I’ve ever visited – I’m really looking forward to it.

Yukon Quest: At the Start Line

The annual Yukon Quest kicked off this weekend in downtown Whitehorse — the Quest, which alternates its start and end points every year, is a 1000-mile race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks (or vice versa), following a historic route along the Yukon River and its tributaries.

I was at the start line Saturday morning. Here’s one of a few hundred shots I took from inside the chute:

The final dog team sets out for Fairbanks. 1000 miles to go.

Roadside Alaska: Tok Thai Food

By the time I hit Glennallen, Alaska, on a recent road trip, I’d been driving for a day and a half — and I’d resigned myself to the fact that any rural, roadside meals I stopped for were likely to involve a deep fryer, a burger bun, or both.

Then I spotted Tok Thai Food, a bright purple take-out truck in the parking lot of a gas station at the crossroads of the Richardson and Glenn highways, just outside Glennallen. (Despite the name, the food truck is more than a hundred miles from Tok.) I didn’t know what to expect, quality-wise, but I had no intention of just passing by.

For $10, I got an enormous (Alaska-sized?) portion of pad thai with chicken; the friend who was along for the ride got a similarly monstrous vegetable curry. Both were really tasty, and the owner-operators were helpful and friendly, explaining the items on their menu that went beyond the standard westernized-Thai offerings and trying to get a sense of what would suit our tastes best.

I realize most people don’t drive to Alaska looking for good Thai take-out. But if you happen to be passing through Glennallen, I’d strongly recommend a lunch stop. After all, isn’t that part of the beauty of a long-distance road trip — the unlikely roadside offerings along the way?

Roadside Thai take-out in the middle of Alaska