I have a friend who lived in Fairbanks for over three years. Her husband was in the Air Force.
She said, in reply to some issues raised, that buying a copy of the newest Milepost is indispensible. It is a book that details everything one can see and expect on absolutely every highway in Alaska, mile by mile. As for ice fog, it can be daunting. Ice fog forms at about -30 and is caused from exhaust that freezes. It’s like a frozen fog and it is treacherous in the darkened skies.
My friend said there are two sizes of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes in May are huge due to their overwintering and their ‘antifreeze’ type enzyme they have in their bodies. The mosquitoes get smaller as summer progresses and so small that the ones in July/Aug are called “no see-ums”. You get the idea. As for salaries in the area, most are higher than in the lower 48 simply because most everything costs more in Alaska than elsewhere. Often there is a cost of living hike in the normal salary to compensate for the area.
CubMistress, my friend worked at the Fairbanks North Star Borough Public Library, maybe just a little earlier than you were there. She says the library "is a font of information and events, A great place to meet and greet and to learn about all things Alaskan. " They have a whole room in the library devoted to Alaskan books and it is a great place to get familiar with the state.
I was told you should always keep your vehicle in good working order, put various heaters on it (oil pan, engine block, battery blanket and an interior heater), be sensible in what your body and your vehicle can do in below 0 weather and have a blast!
I saw this terrific movie Chronic Town that takes place in Fairbanks. I have no idea whether it has any basis in reality, but it gives a really great feeling about what the director thinks about Fairbanks. It looks damned cold and populated with a bunch of bizarre characters. Unfortunately, it appears that no one has yet to pick it up to distribute it.
Ha ha ha! You made the joke I wanted to, but my post was too long. At that temperature, you can make your own Folgers Crystals by going outside with a cup of hot coffee and tossing it into the air. None will hit the ground in liquid form.
**Caractacus Pott ** and Lemur pretty much nailed it. I’ll say up front that Fairbanks is not my favorite place, but there are far worse in Alaska (Wasilla, for example). I only lived in Fairbanks for a few semesters of college, and that was back in the late 60s. That kind of backs into the fact that there is a full-fledged and accredited University of Alaska campus there. Northern lights are a common sight in the winter months.
Everybody talks about the cold there, but I would rather be at -40 in FBX than at -20 in Anchorage. It gets very hot in the summer in FBX, up to 90 at times, and forest fires in the surrounding country can cause air quality problems from mild to severe.
I’ve always found Fairbanks to be an odd mix, politically. Residents there don’t generally fit in to any neat little box, and are probably as close to being true Independents as anyone. There is definitely a small-town feel to the place, as well.
There are basically three highways out of the city: the Parks, the Richardson, and the Dalton. The Parks Highway takes you south to Anchorage and passes through Denali National Park. I highly recommend visiting this treasure often, and driving the old Denali Highway between Cantwell and Paxson. It also passes through the infamous Wasilla. The Richardson takes you to Tok and onward to the Canadian border. It’s the old (and longer) route to Anchorage, as well. The Dalton goes north to Prudhoe Bay, and is an interesting drive. There are a couple of hot springs near Fairbanks that are nice.
If you like winter activities such as cross-country skiing and snowmachine riding, it would be difficult to find a better place for it. Once you leave the Fairbanks city limits, there are thousands of square miles of nothing. You’re also in prime moose and caribou hunting country, not to mention the fishing.
Fairbanks will be what you make of it, basically. There are no high-end restaurants, and it’s not on any entertainer’s tour calendar. If you can entertain yourself, you’ll do fine. If not, it will be a total drag.
I’ve found that on the Dope, in terms of the US, if you aren’t living in a major metro area like San Fran, New York, Seattle or Boston then you live in a quaint little place with no culture or enjoyment whatsoever.
However, I could also get a job anywhere in this city and have less than a 30 minute commute (my office moved and I currently have a 4 minute drive!) and I still have all the ‘amenities’ like a Japanese owned and operated sushi place, designer clothing stores, an orchestra and ethnic grocery stores.
You picked the broadest of the broad brush there. It mostly isn’t true. First of all, you missed about 200 major cities in the U.S. to compare to. Second of all, lots of smaller areas have some of the things you mentioned like a symphony that rivals the big cities. There are ethnic clusters all over the place that have ethnic food in droves. I live pretty far outside of Boston yet our area is inundated by light skinned Brazilians for reasons that I have never understood. If you want true Brazilian culture and cuisine, you need to come to this mostly lily white suburban area of Boston. There are countless other examples.
Um, I meant that other Dopers seem to think that, and this thread is an example. Treating a city the size of Fairbanks like a 500 person township with a general store isn’t fair.
I grew up near a small city considered the black sheep of the province considered a black sheep by the rest of Canada. I’m used to people being condescending to me based on where I live.
If you said this ironically, ignore the rest of this post. One big reason for so many retired military in Fairbanks is because there are so many retired military in Fairbanks. Unlike non-military areas, retirees can strike up a conversation with strangers, knowing well that they probably share a common background. Sound familiar? Try the stereotype of retired New Yorkers moving to Florida. It’s not only because of the sunshine and orange juice.
The only people I’ve ever met from Fairbanks were complaining about our weather. According to the mother, it’s nicer in the summer there than here! And not too terribly worse in the winter, though I find that hard to believe if 40- isn’t uncommon. So, I guess the weather could be a plus, depending on where the OP’s sister is coming from.
I see your Dope and raise you the internet in general. I was reading a message board about Phoenix awhile back and it was just page after page of people going off about how Phoenix was this post-apocalyptic deadzone where a boredom bomb went off and it’s nothing but white people and chain-this and chain-that, etc etc. Shit, man, the Phoenix metro area is over 4 million people! I can ride my bike to an Indian restaurant, an Indian market, an English restaurant, an African market, an Asian market, a Russian market, and more Mexican restaurants and stores than I can count. I’d hate to think what people online would say about the town I grew up in. The people there probably aren’t aware that such things as foreign markets exist in the US, and I doubt that thought is too uncommon in small-town America.
