*Kihei's Kelly Thayer stands atop a mound of Fairbanks snow as the aurora borealis spirals behind her. She said it was a lifelong dream to see the lights.*

By MATTHEW THAYER

Five days in frosty Fairbanks seemed like an adequate window to catch the Northern Lights.

As things turned out, we could have spent five hours in the sleepy Alaska town and flown home happy. Giddy even. And that would have been our loss, for Fairbanks turned out to be a fun and interesting place. With its friendly locals, icy roads and invigorating climate, America's northernmost city served up a slice of arctic life far removed from our Maui home.

Blayne "Buddy" Streeper of Fort Nelson, BC Canada, and his dog team head for the finish line on the second day of the 2025 Lotto Alaska Open North American Championship last weekend in Fairbanks. Covering 68.3 miles in three sprint events held over three days, Streeper and his dogs won with a combined time of three hours, 34 minutes and 54.1 seconds. Streeper averaged roughly 19.5 mph while setting a three-day total track record in the 79th running of the annual event that predates the Iditarod. Frenchman Remy Coste, competing out of Sweden, took second less than two minutes back.

The call north started last fall when my wife Kelly read that the aurora borealis was predicted to be exceptionally active in 2025, perhaps the most in a decade. Seeing the lights has long been on her bucket list. A report from NASA said the sun was at a "solar maximum" and generating an intense solar wind. This was the year to go.

My experience with past major celestial events has taught me to keep a firm grip on hopes and expectations. Maui's rain-soaked total solar eclipse of July 11, 1991, still hurts. From Halley's Comet to Hale-Bopp, even when you do luck out and catch astral phenomena, they rarely live up to their billing. "See that blur next to the star?" "Which star?" Several years back, our family booked rooms at Chena Hot Springs near Fairbanks to view the lights, but we were rained out. Even if the sky had been clear, a low ebb in solar activity meant seeing the aurora borealis was a long shot anyway.

To maximize this spring's opportunity, we elected to hold off booking flights, a car and lodging until the aurora app on Kelly's phone predicted a good show. The 10-day weather forecast was also part of the equation, but we pulled the trigger a few days early when a bar graph glowed red for March 12-16. According to the Kp index, which rates aurora strength from a nothing zero to a knocking-satellites-offline nine, Fairbanks was predicted to have three nights of outstanding fives, followed by a pair of shimmering fours.

We booked the trip and crossed our fingers for clear skies. As the weather forecast unfolded, we were thrilled to see it was as rosy as the aurora's. Unfortunately, both predictors shifted downward as our vacation neared. Clouds were now expected, but we still might have one or two clear nights. Kp index fives became threes, then twos. Nightly temperatures were predicted to be below zero Fahrenheit. A full moon might make viewing more difficult.

Undaunted, we packed all the warm gear we owned or could borrow (mostly borrow) and set off on the morning of March 11. Arriving at Fairbanks International Airport around 9:30 p.m. the same day, we dug our thermal jackets out of our bags and headed to the rental car desk.

Any pressure I felt about driving on icy roads was amplified a bit when the agent handed over the keys to an all-wheel-drive SUV with a little more than 500 miles on the odometer. I guess if we were going to plow into a snowbank, they figured we should do it in style.

Once our suitcases were stowed, the car's heater was running and we were buckled in tight, I performed several practice stops and turns in the parking lot before heading to the Best Western Pioneer Park Inn. Tucked in a little stand of woods at the edge of the city proper, its lobby smelling of chlorine from the pool we never used, the inn became our home away from home for the next five nights.

The fickle nature of the forecasts became evident even before we unpacked. The night had been predicted to be cloudy, but it was crisp and clear. Though the Kp index called for a three, according to the new apps we were checking, a burst of aurora activity was headed our way.

We paused only long enough to gear up and ask the folks at the front desk for a tip on where to go nearby. They suggested we plug into our GPS a nursery on Farmers Loop Road called "The Plant Kingdom." There were too many streetlights at that closed business, but our search for a view took us to a plowed turnout off a snow-covered road called Echo Acres Drive.

The aurora was visible as a faint band of gray across the sky as we piled out of the car. Were those clouds? Nope. Those were the Northern Lights! The plan worked! As our eyes adjusted to the moonlit night, flares pulsing in the sky began to take on green and red tints. The pictures we were taking were even brighter.

The aurora glows red and green over Fairbanks, Alaska earlier this month. Generated by disturbances in Earth's magnetosphere caused by the solar wind of the sun, the northern lights are charged particles that can be seen as curtains, rays, spirals and dynamic flickers.

Ignoring our fatigue and freezing appendages, we reveled in the celestial display well past midnight. Just when we decided it was time to head back to the inn, the brightest display of the night gushed up out of the horizon to create a glowing green rope that stretched across the starry heavens. It hung for a minute or two, then spun into a coil that collapsed upon itself.

Our faces hurt from smiling so hard.

In retrospect, on such a clear night, we probably should have stayed in the little pullout parking lot until dawn hoping for more, for the clouds did indeed roll in. Two nights later, under partly-to-mostly cloudy skies, we viewed the total lunar eclipse while the obscured aurora glowed through patchy breaks in the cover. Subdued and moody, it was still an amazing sight. If that night was all we saw of the lights, we would have been satisfied. To hear the Fairbanks locals tell it, many unfortunate aurora chasers return home empty-handed.

*A composite image made from three photographs shows the total lunar eclipse unfolding over Fairbanks on March 13, 2025.*

*The northern lights are visible through a bank of clouds during a total lunar eclipse over Fairbanks, Alaska, on March 13.*

The rest of our late nights in Fairbanks were deemed too murky to bundle up, drive and endure sub-zero temperatures. This shift in focus turned out to be positive. We had a town to explore and new people to meet.

At 64 degrees north latitude and with a population of 31,500 souls, Fairbanks is a distant second to Anchorage in size. The pair remind me of, say, comparing Honolulu to Hilo. One is a major metropolitan area on the rise, and the other a functioning relic contentedly stuck in a slower, bygone time.

Built in a series of grids over flatlands and framed by wooded hills to the east, Fairbanks is graced by Art Deco buildings and a road infrastructure more than adequate for the population. It is a place where U-turns are legal and young people walk around in shorts, slippers and short sleeves when temperatures climb toward the high 20s.

*A statue titled "Unknown First Family" by Malcolm Alexander stands in Fairbanks’ Golden Heart Plaza on clear sunny day with single-digit temperatures.*

"I love Fairbanks," said Amber Vaska, town resident and chair for the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. "It's small enough that you know everyone. It is small enough that you can easily get out of town and into nature. Anchorage is a little too city-like for us."

Vaska was part of a contingent playing traditional games at the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center in downtown Fairbanks when we stopped in. The Dena Games she helps organize provide a chance for athletes to practice for July's big World Eskimo Indian Olympics and to participate in traditional competitions that can't be held in the summer, like dog mushing and snowshoe racing.

*Dena Games athletes and elders participate in a competition of "Hand Games" at the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitor Center earlier this month.*

Vaska said it was her organization's mission to "continue to celebrate our cultures and preserve them for future generations."

"We have dancing, we have regalia, so we really come together statewide, even internationally, with our indigenous cultures in Alaska and the polar north," she said.

Athlete Brittany Woods-Orrison said she splits her time between Fairbanks and remote Rampart on the Yukon River, population 57.

"Fairbanks is a really interesting community because it is called a hub in Alaska, which means a lot of smaller communities and villages surrounding Fairbanks come here frequently," she said. "Fairbanks is where a lot of people come together and where big events happen, so a lot of different cultural groups are represented here. I just love living in Alaska, especially this area, because we get the extremes. From the winter solstice, we're building to the summer solstice. Every day the light changes by seven minutes."

Woods-Orrison said being a native athlete is about celebrating culture, competition and mastering survival skills.

"I started competing in the native games at a young age, so I have a really strong sense of self," she said. "With indigenous people, it's our relationship with the land and knowing that we can live in coexistence. We're stewards of this place and we belong to this place. I grew up respecting the animals we ate and what we harvested and the people I'm around. I'm thankful to the native games because there is no other games or sports like it. We have such a high value to sportsmanship. They all have survival skills tied to them, or a deeper purpose."

Fairbanks resident Jonathan Smith paused after a training walk in the snow to describe why he moved to Fairbanks in 2011 and never left.

"It's a weird mix of blue-collar folks and outdoorsy hunters and free-spirited people who want to commune with nature," Smith said with a smile. "You know, stoners, free spirits, people who just want to make art in their front yard and live in a dry cabin."

*Fairbanks resident Jonathan Smith gives a thumbs up after a training session for the Midnight Sun Run scheduled for the summer solstice.*

The California transplant said the coldest temperature he has experienced in Fairbanks was 59 below.

"I like the cold and that was the first time that I actually cursed the cold," Smith said. "It takes your breath right out of your lungs. You definitely don't want to go outside with any of your skin exposed."

Little Owl Cafe barista Fiona Secor said the cafe and most other businesses remain closed when temperatures plunge so deep that even cars don't run properly.

*Little Owl Cafe Artisans Courtyard barista Fiona Secor offers up a tray of custom cupcakes.*

"Last year it got down to the negative 40s for a pretty good stretch," she said. "But it's been pretty mild this winter."

The great-granddaughter of one of Fairbanks' first doctors, Secor said she has fond memories of seeing the Northern Lights while waiting to head off to school on dark winter mornings.

"It's so cool, like every time, to see them up in the sky," she said. "It's always so fun and kind of magical to see them."

Woods-Orrison said the aurora is a way to commune with the past.

"We have really old oral stories about the lights and what they mean," she said. "It reminds me of my ancestors and what has passed. They're a sign of our ties to this place. It helps me to slow down and just, almost meditate in a way because I'm enjoying what is happening. Everyone takes a moment to pause and we all get excited together."

*The aurora borealis flares over Fairbanks.*

Vaska says there are traditional ways to get the aurora to shine brighter.

"I think it's supposed to be our ancestors who have passed away, as their way to still connect with the world today," she said. "If you want them to dance more in the sky, you whistle. And they're also supposed to get deeper colors. Who knows? And you’re supposed to whistle and the wind will blow."

It was Vaska who told us that the Alaska Dog Mushers' Association's 2025 Lotto Alaska Open North American Championship was being held on a wooded course at the edge of town. Drawing some of the top mushers and dogs from the United States, Canada and Europe, the championship featured three days of racing, the first two courses about 20 miles long and the final nearly 28 miles. We watched on the second day alongside several hundred other spectators as teams started and finished.

*His dogs bounding from the interval start, Joe Bifelt of Huslia, Alaska begins his second day of competing in the 2025 Lotto Alaska Open North American Championship.*

Who hasn't seen dog mushers and their barking teams in movies or on TV? At this race, you notice right away that these are not your prototypical huskies, nor are the sleds made of wood and sinew. The dogs look to be mixed breeds: muscular, long-legged runners with shorter coats. The sleds are small and no doubt made of the latest lightweight components. The lines of dogs tore off at intervals at the start, barking for joy. About an hour later, the top teams returned lathered up and spotted with kicked-up ice and snow—and still barking for joy.

Michael Tetzner, of Hamburg, Germany, kicks to do his part as his 16-dog team races to the finish on the second day of the 2025 Lotto Alaska Open North American Championship in Fairbanks. Tetzner finished ninth.

*Anny Malo of Quebec, Canada, guides her team to the finish line. She finished third out of 20 finishers.*

Interesting scenes unfolded as we were leaving the parking lot. We saw competitors watering, feeding and caring for their dogs. Many of their trailers looked like oversized pigeon coops with stacked rows of square doors. The dogs seemed more than happy to be boosted into their private suites once they were fed and watered.

From the mushers' park, trying to make the most of our last day, we headed to the University of Alaska Museum of the North and its unique building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. Conveying "a sense of Alaska, with innovative lines and spaces evoking images of alpine ridges, glaciers, breakup on the Yukon River and the aurora," the museum looks like a cross between an igloo and a spaceship. We got to walk beneath a hanging bowhead whale skeleton and lay hands upon a mesmerizing 3,550-pound Alaskan jade boulder, but we did not see the bus featured in the book and movie, "Out of the Wild."

*University of Alaska Museum of the North is housed in a building like none other on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.*

The Fairbanks City bus abandoned along the Stampede Trail in 1961 is where American nomad Chris McCandless starved to death in 1992. Dubbed "The Magic Bus" by McCandless in his journal, it became a pilgrimage site for adventurers intent on risking fates similar to the one he suffered. The bus was helicoptered out of the remote area near Denali National Park in 2020 and transferred to the Museum of the North, where it now sits in storage. A museum official said the bus will be displayed once its permanent on-campus outdoor exhibit space is completed, which is expected by the end of this year.

*A 42-foot skeleton of a bowhead whale is suspended over the Museum of the North's lobby.*

Both the Museum of the North and Morris Thompson Center feature enough collections of memorabilia, stuffed wildlife and artwork to make them must-stops for any visitor to Fairbanks with time to spare.

*A stuffed bison holds the high ground in a Museum of the North exhibit.*

For the record, we returned the rental car unscathed. Though I grew up driving in winter snow and ice, I solicited advice from my son and others who lived in Alaska. The rules are still the same. Leave room to stop, watch out for black ice and never spike your brakes. Our biggest driving adventure took us to the summit of Murphy Dome, a snowbound hilltop, elevation 2,877 feet. I have no way of judging wind chill, but the car's thermometer said it was one below zero and a stiff breeze was blowing when I exited the car to take in the 360-degree view. Was it 10 below? Or 15 below? All I know is that it was cold enough to chase me back into the rig and down the hill.

After getting so lucky seeing the aurora on our first night, we wondered if five days would be too long. Instead, we were sorry to leave the laid-back town. We were going to miss the snowshoe races, as well as an international ice carving competition just getting underway. There would be no more hearty breakfasts at The Cookie Jar Restaurant. Would we ever again have the opportunity to see the northern lights make swirling, dancing magic in the sky?

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