The long days are the most notable feature of Alaska during summer.  In Fairbanks, there are up to ~20 hours of sunlight in midsummer and it never gets completely dark.  This allows for lots of late-night activities.

On the summer solstice, June 21, the Fairbanks Goldpanners, a minor league team, play their annual Midnight Sun Game.  Mark, Todd, and I saw the Goldpanners play the Santa Barbara Forresters in the 95th edition of the game.  The game begins about 10:30 pm local time and at midnight they stop the game and have a little ceremony to celebrate the midnight sun.  The entire game is played under natural light.  There are artificial lights, which they use during other games, but for the midnight sun game, they don't turn them on.  However, they probably should've for this game.  It was a cold and rainy night, which made it rather dark, as well as unpleasant to sit and watch.  The Goldpanners won 3-2 in a come from behind 9th inning rally.

Golf during the summer is often a trying experience, with crowds of people and long waits for tee times.  However, it's not as bad in Fairbanks since there are 24 hours of tee times.  The Fairbanks Golf & Country Club is open 24 hours in midsummer.  It is the northernmost golf course in the United States.  We teed off around 11:30 pm for a 9-hole round with few other people on the links.  The course was actually one of the most challenging I've ever played.  Not that it was particularly difficult in its layout.  It was mainly due to the quality of the grass, which due to the harsh winters and short summers is difficult to keep in good shape.  This was particularly true of the greens.  These were not the nice smooth grassy greens like the pros play.  These were sandy, bumpy greens, where every putt was a crapshoot.  Tiger Woods is an okay golfer, but I think the Fairbanks course would bring him to his knees.

We also enjoyed a couple late nights at the Howling Dog Saloon.  This is on the outskirts of town and is an interesting place with lots of locals.  The inside is eclecticly decorated with lots of paraphernalia on the walls and ceiling, including flags and currency from all over the world.  One of its most notable pieces is the red carpet that the Pope John Paul II and President Reagan walked on when they visited Fairbanks.  It now carpets the stage where the bands play.  Outside, they had a couple horseshoe pits.  A group of four of us played a couple games when a couple guys from the nearby Eielson Air Force Base came up to play "winners".  That ended up being Todd and me.  You could tell these Air Force guys had been to this saloon frequently and had played a lot of horseshoes.  Despite our victory, Todd and I had not been very impressive and the Air Force guys were sure they'd beat us easily.  They jumped out to an early lead until Todd caught fire.  He threw a couple ringers and a couple leaners.  I even heated up a bit and we destroyed the Air Force guys and they walked away, their buzz-cut heads lowered in shame.

We took an authentic paddlewheel  river boat cruise up the Chena and Tanana Rives outside of Fairbanks.  One of the fascinating things is that almost every house has a seaplane out front.  It was like any suburb, but instead of a car in the driveway, there was a seaplane.  We passed Susan Butcher's house - she is a four-time winner of the Iditarod sled dog race and her dogs were out front in 5-star kennel accommodations.

I'm not quite sure why, but one of the major tourist attractions in Fairbanks is Alaskaland (now called Pioneer Park).  It's kind of like Disneyland for Alaska, but a lot lamer.  There's just a couple small rickety amusement park rides and some displays of Alaskan cultural artifacts - cabins, steam engines, etc.

After Fairbanks, Todd, Mark, and I headed to Anchorage, which compared to Fairbanks was a revelation.  Fairbanks, while it's the second largest city in Alaska, is really small town and very distinctively Alaskan.  Anchorage, on the other hand, is an almost cosmopolitan city, with a downtown and suburbs.  On the other hand, it is also very generic compared to Fairbanks, and it feels in many ways like any mid-sized city in the U.S.

From Anchorage, we headed out to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula.  On the way, the road weaves along the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.  This area has one of largest tides in the world.  People have actually been killed when the the tide rushed in before they could reach high ground.  The Cook Inlet is named after Captain Cook, who discovered the region.  Cook is one of the world's great explorers and cruised all around the Pacific, discovering Australia, New Zealand, visiting Japan, and was the first to sailed around Antarctica in search of the continent (though he never made it far enough south to actually see Antarctica).

We stopped at Portage Lake, which is fed by the Portage Glacier.  Small icebergs break off the glacier on the far side of the lake and float across.  Because it is glacier-fed, the lake is very blue in color and very cold.  We also took a short hike up the glacier.  This was a bit difficult.  The soft snow is hard to walk on and the sun glare off the white snow and ice made it very difficult to see, especially without sunglasses!  Nearby once stood the town of Portage.  However, it was completely destroyed in the Good Friday Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964, the most severe earthquakes to ever hit the U.S. (9.2 on the Richter Scale).  Now, there are are just a few remnants of buildings, barely noticeable, off the side of the highway.

Seward is at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula.  It is the main Alaskan port for cruise ships and is the southern terminus of the Alaskan Railroad.  The biggest annual event in Seward is the 4th of July Mt. Marathon Race up and down the big hill just outside of Seward.  The race up is grueling, but the race down is harrowing as people coming running or tumbling down out of control.

We took a 9-hour cruise from Seward to see some glaciers.  We saw lots of wildlife:  bald eagles, sea otters, porpoises, seals, killer whales, puffins, cormorants, and many other birds.  We went to the Northwestern Glacier which is rapidly retreating.  Once it almost completely filled the bay, but when we saw it was barely a tidewater glacier (one that ends in the water as opposed to on land).  By now, it may no longer reach the sea.  It was a fascinating thing to see.  The boat engines were turned off and you could hear the ice cracking and every few minutes a piece of ice would splinter off and crash into the water.  The ice has a brilliant bluish color due to reflection by the compressed ice.

It was a nice cruise overall, but a bit long.  And the weather was not great.  It was bit cold.  No, actually it was freezing - the coldest day of the trip and it almost felt colder than Alaska did in winter.  Another problem is that some of the cruise encompasses open water areas where there was a pretty good swell.  This made for a rough ride.  It didn't bother me, but fortunately for Todd and Mark, Todd brought along some seasickness pills.

Next we went to Kenai Fjords National Park.  This is a huge park that covers much of the Kenai Peninsula.  There is only one road however - a 9-mile dirt, at the end of which is the Exit Glacier.  We hadn't seen enough glaciers yet, so decided to go see it.  On the side of the road, every half mile or so, we'd see a sign with a number.  "1827", "1854", "1876"....The numbers were going up by we couldn't figure out what they meant.  We got to the end of the road and after a treacherous walk across glacial streams, trying not to soak our shoes, we finally figured out what the numbers meant.  They are the years where the glacier terminated.  It had once filled the entire valley, but since the 1800s it has been retreating rapidly.  Even since 1995 it had retreated 25 feet.

One thing about glaciers is that they can be rather dangerous.  Ice can suddenly break off and fall on you if you're too close.  There were many warning signs to this effect.  However, many people seemed to ignore them.  A couple of small children were crawling under the overhanging ice while their mothers chatted with each other, oblivious to the imminent danger - hey, isn't that child abuse!?

We headed back to Anchorage and it was time to leave Mark and Todd behind.  They head back to Colorado, while I hopped on a bus to Denali National Park.  I had visited Denali on my previous Alaska trip, but it was not much of a success - very little was open, I didn't get to see Mt McKinley, and I saw absolutely no wildlife.  So, this time I was on a mission.  I was going to see Mt. McKinley and I was going to see some wildlife!

Denali National Park is one of the better managed parks and as near to a true wilderness experience as you'll get in a national park.  There is only one, gravel-covered road that bisects the park for 85 miles.  Automobiles are not allowed to drive into the park.  The Park Service runs a bus service back and forth across the park.  Reservations must be made at the park headquarters to get on the bus into the park, but once in the park, you can get off anywhere and hike around and then catch another bus.  I planned to camp during my visit.  There are a few regular campgrounds, but for backcountry hiking there are no regular campgrounds, no even any regular trails.  You simply get off the bus where you want and head off into the wilderness.  Wherever you want to stop for the night you set up camp.  Backcountry permits are very limited, so I had to wait a couple days to get one.

So, first I hopped a bus to the very end of the road at Wonder Lake.  The 85 mile ride takes nearly 8 hours.  There are several reasons for this.  First, the buses move slow along the winding dirt road.  They make several scheduled stops on the route.  Finally there are often unscheduled stops.  To minimize the impact of humans on wildlife, the buses stop whenever wildlife is encountered on or near the road.  They don't continue until the animal has moved on.  If a grizzly bear decides to take a nap in the middle of the road, the buses just sit and wait.

This could be rather frustrating, but for me it was quite pleasant.  I was happy to finally see some animals in Denali National Park.  In fact, I saw quite a few.  A fox moseyed nonchalantly right down the road.  The only problem is that the fox was going down the left side of the road instead of the right.  Must've been an English fox.  We also encounterd some moose and several elk.  And, finally, almost at Wonder Lake, we spotted a grizzly bear and its cub.  It wasn't real close to the road, but I got a good look.

Whenever someone saw an animal, they just had to shout out and the bus would stop.  Inevitably, everyone would grab their camera and rush over to the side of the bus where the animal was spotted and snap pictures.  With grizzlies, the enthusiasm was such that it felt like the bus was seemed in danger of flipping over.

As mentioned above, the road itself is quit the adventure.  In most places it's barely two lanes wide and when buses pass each other they must do so very carefully.  This can be harrowing when you're on a side that has a steep dropoff.  The road also crosses several streams that drain the surrounding mountains.  But these aren't simple one channel rivers.  They are braided streams with many little channels, making the stream bed extremely wide.  The water was milky colored from the glacial silt.

I arrived at Wonder Lake and set up my tent.  My campsite looked right out to Mt. McKinley, at 20,320 feet high, the tallest mountain in North America; it was towering above me just a few miles away.  Or that's what they said anyway.  I couldn't tell.  There was drizzle and very low clouds, so I couldn't see the mountain at all.  This wasn't particularly unusual.  McKinley is visible on average only once every four days.  But, during my four day stay, I thought there'd be a pretty good chance of seeing it at least once during my stay.  But not today.

Besides the view of McKinley, Wonder Lake is notorious for another thing:  mosquitos.  Alaska is known for it's large number and large size of mosquitos.  In fact, Alaskans joke that the mosquito is the state bird of Alaska.  We had experienced the scourge of mosquitos golfing and horseshoeing.  However, at Wonder Lake the concentration of mosquitos is large even by Alaskan standards.  And unfortunately, I hit camp at the beginning of July, right at the mosquito peak.  You had to have every inch of skin covered to prevent getting eaten alive.  The mosquito net for my head that I bought for a few bucks in Anchorage was a very wise choice.  Nonetheless, the mosquitos made life difficult.  I had to dive in and out of the tent quickly to keep as many mosquitos as possible of the tent.  Cooking was an adventure.  Several mosquitos were unintentionally added to my rice dinner while I heated it.  I guess it was a little extra protein.

The next morning was the same as the day before - foggy and rainy; again no view of McKinley.  I had a backcountry permit for the night several miles to the east.  So I hopped on a bus and headed back towards the park entrance (and away from the mosquitos).  The bus dropped my off and I hiked a ways into the wilderness and set up camp.  Camping in the Denali backcountry takes a little effort.  Bears are always a danger, especially if open food is around.  So they provide you with a bear-proof canister to store food in.  That canister must be at least 100 yards from your tent.  And your cooking location has to be 100 yards from the tent and the food storage area.  So, you get some exercise cooking dinner.

The next morning dawned bright and clear and as I came out of my tent I saw blue skies.  I climbed a small ridged and saw in the distance, the very tip of the snow-covered peak of Mt. McKinley.  Finally!  It was visible!  But, I didn't have a view of it!  I hightailed it down to the road and waited for a bus westward toward the mountain.  There was a visitor center with a great viewpoint for the mountain about an hour away.  I caught the bus and coming over hills I saw a couple glimpses of McKinley.  But as we neared the visitor center, I saw clouds starting to roll.  Hurry up bus!

We rounded the final bend into the visitor center and there in front was...a bank of clouds where Mt. McKinley should've been.  I was too late - the clouds beat me.  I missed McKinley yet again.  So, I hopped back on the eastward bus and headed to the park entrance.  I set up camp and took a shower for the first time in four days.  Then, I went to the park diner and, after four days of eating granola bars, rice and nutella with pita bread, I had the best cheeseburger I've ever eaten.  The next morning I took the bus back to Anchorage and the day after I flew back home where I saw it get dark for the first time in two weeks.