Day 39: Fairbanks: Some gems in the mess

After almost a week in nature, we were carving for a city. We hoped Fairbanks, a metropolitan of about 100K residents would give us a vibrant city experience. We were also looking forward to try some good Thai food, as Fairbanks, for some reason – excelss in Thai food, with more than 20 Thai restaurants.

We started the day heading to check the Museum of the North. From the hill overlooking the town, the Denali mountains were clearly visible for the 2nd time in our trip. We did not feel like getting into the museum, so we went to Ruti’s favorite museum and the ultimate symbol of being in a city: Costco (followed by Safeway and Fred Mayers), where we stocked for the following days. We continued to explore downtown. The place looked deserted and miserable, not inviting, and very poor looking. We further found out that most of Fairbanks are closed on Sundays (apparently, the resident of Fairbanks don’t like to work on Sundays) – and all the famous distilleries and most of the top-rated Thai restaurants were not working on Sundays. Around downtown, we stopped at the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center. That was the first real highlight of the day. The small free museum is brilliantly looking and tells the stories of life in the north part of Alaska and the tradition of the First Nation residents.

Our next stop was Pioneer Park. We were thinking we were heading into a city standard park – but we found the 44 acres park, a cool, spacious park commemorating early Alaskan history with multiple museums and historic displays on site. We entered the concert hall in the park to catch the last two songs of a live concert of American songs that opened the local art festival. The Alaska Salmon Bake is a traditional local bar-b-q that cooks Salmon (and other fish and meats) over an open fire. We did not taste as we were looking for a Thai dinner.

The only (reasonable looking) Thai place that was opened was the noodle house in the 2nd place. The place was packed – and the food was yammi. Highly recommended. To close the day – we headed to the most vibrant local brewery – the HooDoo brewery. The location was bizarre (a gem in the middle of industrial zone), the beer was fine (not as good as the 49th state) – but the experience was great.