A day at Fairbanks, Alaska

Visiting Santa Claus Home was one of the important attraction that I personally wanted to go while staying in Fairbanks. Northpole was just 20 minute drive from Fairbanks and we started immediately after our breakfast at the hotel. The men were not that very interested in going to Northpole :-). Santa was available during the time we visited his home and many pictures were clicked with him.

They had a very big store inside the home and kids got few gifts from parents as well as grand parents. Arvind mailed some letters from Santa’s home to his teachers. There were also 4 reindeers outside his home and the kids got few snaps with the deers.

Our next stop after Northpole was to visit the Ice Museum. We visited the Fairbanks Ice museum that was located in the downtown after a very nice lunch at the Bella Pasta place. This museum had good displays of the ice sculptures like eskimos, mini restaurant and other wildlife sculptures. This was a one hour show that started with a mini movie followed by seeing the sculptures and finally a ice carving demo

They also had the Northern Lights show every night at 8 PM. We decided to come back for the Northern Lights show after visiting the Chena Hot Springs.

Chena Hot springs is like 70 mile drive from Fairbanks and they have plenty of activities within their resort for all age groups. As we reached Chena hot springs close to 4.40 PM, we missed the horse ride and the only activity available was the Aurora Ice Museum show and hot springs. Though we saw the Ice museum show in Fairbanks, we decided to do this one more time here as this was supposed to be the world’s largest year-round ice environment in the world.

Aurora Ice Museum is maintained at -5 degree Celsius inside and keeping the museum icy cold in the heat of summer comes from the patented absorption chiller, the first of its kind in the world used for this purpose. This museum features awesome ice sculptures that u’ll be deeply sunked in the beautiful changing colored ice crystal chandeliers overhead. The museum has a observation deck with staircase, polar bear bedroom, life size jousters on horseback, igloo, ice outhouse and an ice bar room.

They also offer you to sip a specialty beverage called “applentini” in an ice carved martini glass and this costs 15$ apart from the ticket price

The beverage is served at the Aurora ice bar and people sit there and relax themselves with the drink towards the end of the show. As none of us in our group drink, I don’t have much information to talk about that experience 🙂

This museum is open year round and I personally liked this as the best from the quality of the museum, their ambience and the various displays within the museum. So if ur visiting Fairbanks, don’t miss the Aurora Ice Museum !.

Karthik & the kids went out to the Hot springs to spend some time in the water. As the kids were less than 18, they were not allowed to enter the Hot springs area and instead had a wonderful time in the jacquizi area.

Headed back to Fairbanks from Chena Hot springs to see the Northern lights show. The show was a very simple one but I’m sure u’ll get a great experience seeing it real between the months September – March timeframe. Just by looking at the show, I would want to come to Fairbanks during winter time to watch the Aurora Borealis