Highlights Map
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We leave Fairbanks relatively early as we have a long drive planned to Gakona, our next accomodation, and lots of things to do on the way. The first stop is at the outskirts of Fairbanks in North Pole where the Santa Claus house sits. It is actually a store with a Christmas theme that most people will see in the summer.
Inside there are surprisingly many people buying gifts and some fun exhibits including one showing the route that Santa Claus supposedly takes every Christmas night.
Outside is the reindeer academy where they teach reindeer to fly, or something like that. The ones we see don’t really look very trained yet….but maybe by Christmas who knows.
Next stop is Knotty Shop, it is a unplanned stop driven by a cache in the area but given that we stopped anyway why not enter the stop as it looks interesting.
Inside besides lots of souvenirs there is also a fun exhibit with many stuffed animals as well as a few figures of Bigfoot, the mythical cryptid that roams the forests here, or does he?
There are no bigfoots along the way but we see lots of evidence of flooding as we drive along the river. Luckily the road is well built but still it is quite an exciting drive as we make our way south.
Next we stop at Quartz Lake State Recreation Area but before we enter we use the opportunity to have our first glimpse of the famous Trans-Alaska Pipeline which runs next the highway, sometimes visible and sometimes not.
Next in the park is Lost Lake which has a beautiful dock but also what seem to be millions of mosquitoes which make it impossible to exit the car without being eaten alive.
So instead of our intended longer visit looking for birds from the trails we do a short visit from the car watching a Horned Grebe on the lake before returning back towards the entrance.
Before we exit we decide to try another trail, it has less mosquitoes so we are able to walk a short while on the path to enjoy the beautiful nature.
There are lots of dragonflies here which makes sense given the number of mosquitoes, there should be even more in our humble opinion.
We stop one more time at the pipeline and have time to admire the many butterflies that enjoy the brief sunny period in the day.
Next we stop at Big Delta State Historic Park, it is quite difficult to find the right parking and entrance but we make it and soon we are in the historical area of the park with some interesting buildings to explore.
The “piece de resistance” of the park is Rika’s Roadhouse, which sat on the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail that ran through here and continued across the river, aided by a ferry. As such it was quite a popular stopping point and was even the stage for a few pitched battles between the government that wanted to charge a toll for the road and truckers that really didn’t want to pay.
You can enter the building and it is quite interesting with many historical artifacts. We are also surprised that no one is guarding the exhibits, in fact the whole park is eerily deserted.
We continue bravely exploring the park while keeping an eye out for zombies or bigfoots or any other evildoers. We don’t see anyone, neither evildoers or humans but we find the scale that ignited the trucker wars as it was supposed to be used to weight trucks for tolls.
We walk for a while along the river which was such a barrier during the times of Rika’s Roadhouse and now can easily be crossed on the bridge we just arrived on. We also find a little baby bird trying to hide from us and raptor birds, hope it survived.
One of the reasons we stopped here was to eat at the cafe as there aren’t that many restaurants on the way tonight. However see above, no one is around likely eaten by bigfoot, so the cafe is closed and we are left without any good choices and decide to try to scrounge around in the nearby village.
Even famished we have to stop at the famous Northern End of the Alaska Highway. It is a bit(big?) of a cheat as we have driven a whooping 0.1 mi on the 1,422mi long highway during our trip. Still we are at the northern terminus so we take in the historic moment before continuing on a completely different highway.
A few more interesting places in Delta Junction are the Sullivan Roadhouse, which is supposed to be open as a museum but isn’t, and the mosquitoes sculpture that happily they cannot close as likely they would. It is quite scary though especially after meeting the mosquitoes personally quite a few times since we started our visit.
Luckily as we exit the town we find an open place where we can buy something to eat and drink and then it is time to continue on our way finding a few more moose along highway 4 as we barrel south.
First stop on the highway is Donnely Creek Recreation Site. It is both a recreation site and a camping area, but as we arrive there is no one else there. It is quite a beautiful stop and we decide to stop and explore it for a while.
As we walk through the campground we are surprised to see that there are no trashcans, guess the bears have a field day around here when campers actually stay here.
The campground sits at the intersection of two creeks and we follow the creeks for some time looking for birds or any other interesting wildlife.
We do not find any mammals but we do see a few birds including a very active spotted sandpiper that follows one of the creeks for some time.
Other birds in the area are the ubiquitous dark eyed juncos and a couple of Swainson’s Thrush with a kingfisher flying a few times over the creek at high speed without stopping or allowing us to take photos.
There are many flowers also and we notice that while many of them are white they are otherwise quite different and when we arrived we can even identify them.
Of course not all of them are white and the ones that aren’t stand out especially the fireweed and the alpine sweet-vetch.
Next we continue to Black Rapids Glacier Viewpoint where we can see the glaciers far in the distance. However what we are looking for is the herd of bison which is supposed to be in the area and that can be seen sometimes from the viewpoint, no luck today unfortunately.
From here we continue following the pipeline that we can see from time to time. We actually assume that the road was built to support the pipeline in case it needs repairs or maintenance but who knows.
The last park and major stop for us is Fielding Lake which is about two miles away from the main highway. The drive itself is nice through the boreal forest and there are a few, possibly abandoned, cabins on the way that are interesting to see.
Bird-wise the only birds we see on the short drive are the dark eyed junco which watch us from the spruces along the way.
The lake itself is a slight disappointment as there are quite a few people there but we also see a few interesting birds, like a lesser yellowlegs so it was worth the drive.
While watching the yellowleg we also observe a white-crowned sparrow enjoying its perch on the tire of a huge truck sitting on the shore of the lake, it is quite fun as it wanders around looking for insects and dirt.
Returning to the highway we continue south stopping a few times to look at the many lakes we pass. And sometimes we are successful as a small lake that we investigate holds a beaver who is working happily on cutting the vegetation around the lake.
A bigger lake holds even more birds like lesser scaups and common loons but is also a lot more civilized with cabins all around the lake and few parking spaces where we can watch the birds.
In the evening we arrive at our lodge which was quite difficult to book and we are not even convinced we actually booked a room. We are happy that the person at the reception is able to find us but we are less happy when we see our room. While it has a private bathroom which we really wanted it has no lock on the door, is in front of the reception and the only thing keeping other people out is a sign on the door. It seems and feels very unsafe and we have quite a bad night sleep given how unsafe we feel.
