Fairbanks

Today was our day to explore Fairbanks. The town has been used as the supply base for the various booms over the years. Currently they support the oil industry up north as well as a growing tourism industry built around the Aurora.

We were picked up in the morning by Tyler who is the third member of Explore Fairbanks tourism team, the organisation which put our trip together. Our first stop was breakfast at the Cookie Jar. This is a favourite haunt of the locals and it’s not hard to see why. Janet started with a chilli omelette and I had a stunning corned beef hash. As always in the US followed by much coffee.

We then headed to the University of Alaska Museum of the North. We were lucky enough to be given a behind the scenes tour of the facility with the head of collections. The first person we met was a kiwi who had trained at Otago Polytechnic and had spent Christmas in Cromwell! That small world thing again.

Our visit was fascinating. They

are in the middle of reworking how they tell the stories of the local people and the connection with what we are doing at Otago Museum was strong. We were privaliged to get to see some of the items saved in the collection vaults including dinosaurs, a woolly mammoths jaw bone and some outstanding dolls made by the first peoples.

A really interesting thing for me was the lab where they were storing 250,000 samples of genetic matter taken from their collection to allow genomic research to take place. This is part of where NZ Genomics (a company I chair) was heading. Great to see it happening. The museum is connected to the university and has a strong ethic of research. A really enjoyable visit and people were very generous with their time and knowledge.

From there we adjourned to a Tai restaurant for lunch. One of the surprises for me is the very strong Asian food influence in Fairbanks. Tyler then showed us around the city and we moved onto the Morris Thompson Centre. This is a joint facility with the tourism and ED people as well as some private groups and tells the story of

Fairbanks and Alaska and then links it to business and tourism ventures. A great example of working together to benefit a region and some good learnings.

Our next stop was at a local craft brewery who are a client of Explore Fairbanks. They are set up in an industrial building and have a great setup in running a small bar. They can only serve you two beers and the atmosphere is great. Nothing like a garden bar in the snow.

The final visit of the day was the most surprising. We had seen reference to the Fountainhead Antique Car Museum around our hotel. It is located out the back and we didn’t have any great expectations. We was wrong! This is one of the US’s best collection of motor cars and is an absolute must see even for somebody like me who doesn’t really get cars. There are 80 cars on display, all pristine and all bar 3 of them are driven. There are at least 8 cars which are the only ones left in the world. Along side them are fashion garments from the time period of the associated cars. They have the worlds first electric cars (100 years old) and the first car in the US.

After this visit we reverted to our room and finished packing. Our flight to Seattle was overnight.

Our visit to Alaska has been a really positive experience. We have been very lucky to be hosted so well and have seen some amazing things. As always this has really just raised thoughts of what next and there is no doubt this would be a very different country in summer and well worth a look in the future.

That second red wine which inspired me to bid on the trip auction last year in New York was a great investment. Now on to Seattle where there are a couple of bucket list items to be ticked off.