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Get Ready to WALK Fairbanks Alaska in 4K from the Comfort of Your Own Home!
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Mar 18, 2025
Let's explore downtown Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks is the state's largest inland city with a population of about 32K people and 92k in the "metro" area. The downtown is small and the city is kind of sprawly. That said, it has an interesting history starting in the earliest 1900's with gold miners and trappers flooding into the area. Captain Barnette settled in the area in 1901 when the boat he was on refused to go any further. The city sits on the Chena river just above where it meets the Tanana River. The city is now a tourist destination as well as serving as a gateway to Prudhoe bay to the north and the terminus of the Alaska Railway coming up from the south. I hope you enjoy the virtual city tour. Keep on steppin' -H Be sure to check out our other Alaska walking tours on searchable website https://citywalksvirtualtours.com. #Alaska #Fairbanks #fairbanksalaska #CityWalks #virtualwalk #walkathome #treadmillworkout #treadmillscenery #virtualtreadmill Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CityWalks Buy me a Coffee at https://ko-fi.com/citywalksvirtualwalkingtours Paypal Donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/CityWalks Instagram: @citywalks_virtualtravel Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCityWalks Twitter: @walks_city You might be interested in our other Channels: CityWalks360 - 360 VR walking videos: tinyurl.com/yg5dkewu TravelingMel - FamilyTravel - https://youtube.com/TravelingMel
View Video Transcript
0:03
hello Walkers and welcome back to City walks it's been a while since I've recorded not since uh maybe
0:10
July I've been cycling through the French videos no pun
0:15
intended but it's a good one uh my name is Henry well actually I'm going to flip
0:21
you around here 1 two three my name is Henry I will be your proxy Walker today
0:26
your virtual travel guide your co- discover and I'm going to flip you around
0:32
again 1 two 3 there we go um and today
0:38
we are in well you would think we're in the middle of October or no November but
0:43
it's actually early September it's about noon and uh 51° fahr 10° C we are in
0:51
Fairbanks Alaska today and it is interesting place beautiful beautiful
1:00
State absolutely Fairbanks is smaller than I would have thought we're going to walk around downtown and I'm going to
1:07
share a little bit of information that I've learned with with you
1:13
and uh then we're going to cross the chaina river and end up at hopefully at
1:18
the Morrison Visitor Center Morris Visitor Center this is a pretty
1:24
cool um mural that I wanted to show you and it's uh it's a Denali mural Denali
1:30
is south of here between here and Anchorage kind of and it's kind of a big dramatic
1:36
swooping mural there's a couple other murals around maybe we'll see them
1:42
uh yeah so this channel welcome to City watch this is the channel where I walk
1:47
you around and we discover things I often do not know I'm not a an an expert
1:56
in any of these places typically uh with a few exceptions and this is not an
2:01
exception um and I point out things that are interesting like this metal work
2:07
here with uh dog slers kind of a neat design for the downtown
2:13
area uh and I ramble on so if you are looking for a silent walking video which
2:21
I totally respect uh probably jeez
2:31
probably not the ideal channel for you uh but there's a ton of other ones out there in any case um we're just going to
2:40
wander on here as we get down to Third Avenue I'm going to get away from this main road for a second we're going to
2:46
head on third we were just on kushman uh oh that's much better the
2:52
downtown area of Fairbanks is not large but in fact the town only only has
3:00
about 30,000 or so people in it uh residents and 990,000 in the what is it
3:09
it's the uh Fairbanks Northstar burrow which is massively in terms of
3:16
area uh so I we think it's about the size of Boseman little smaller than
3:23
bosan Montana which is right near where we live uh can see interesting flowers over
3:32
there at the Bon Tha restaurant uh a lot of stuff is got that
3:37
Northern weathered look to it what I imagine it as um this is oh this is soba
3:46
and there's a hostel down here there's a place called The creery which has some uh sweets and that sort of thing you can
3:54
see there not a lot of tall buildings here I'm not sure the reasoning behind that there is a couple of hotels around
4:01
uh we'll pass one and then some sporting good stores and we'll see a couple we'll look in the window of a few gift shops
4:07
as well um all right what else I was going to
4:13
say oh last night we saw the Aurora and earlier in the week we went to the
4:19
Morrison Center and saw a a talk on the Aurora from a local astrophysicist or
4:27
geomagnetic physicist uh which which was fascinating and he said
4:33
that one way or another Fairbanks has the Aurora every night you can't always
4:38
see it because it's cloudy or it's light in the summer uh
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and here's Big Rays Alaskan Outfitters I think it's kind of a local chain uh oh
4:54
Fairbanks Anchorage and Kodiak so um anyway we got to see a little bit
4:59
last night it wasn't magnificent as I've seen it before but it was kind of cool and exciting to see and it's a it's a
5:08
major draw for tourism here and it's most active in the fall and
5:15
spring and probably more visible in the winter cuz it's dark and tends to be
5:21
clear because of the temperature uh this is a big old parking garage here this I think is the Polaris
5:27
building up ahead and it was for a long time the tallest building in Anchor in Fairbanks sorry and they seem to be
5:35
tearing it down now I think that's the Polaris building uh and this dates back to the I
5:42
think the '
5:49
50s here's Lacy Street Theater and it's currently now the uh Fairbanks Ice
5:56
Museum we have not been in there we're going to go down here a little way as an
6:02
explore kind of a lot of' 60s designed elements that are around
6:12
still my son who loves maps and Urban Design is comment
6:17
on how many parking lots there are down here so I mentioned the Aurora Borealis
6:23
which is we're under something called The auroral Oval here and that's kind of this dut shaped or oval shaped deal you
6:32
can see the Fall colors out there um that is over the
6:39
poles and so that's why they have Aurora every single day uh is not always spectacular but
6:48
they have some sort of activity this is Noble Street
6:55
here we're actually going to circle around and backtrack I think
7:01
kind of a neat graffiti thing over there um cuz I want to go show
7:08
you a couple other things that I have some I want to thank our patreon
7:14
supporters today and our Kofi supporters and our one-time PayPal
7:19
supporters your donations your contributions really make this channel a
7:25
little bit easier a little bit more bearable you know pays for some of our travels buys us some coffees Etc thank you very
7:33
much for generosity you can find out more about that in the description
7:39
below the patreon is about five bucks a month very lightweight if you're
7:45
interested uh also leave me a comment I love getting your guys' comments about our walks Corrections additional info um
7:55
other places to walk uh places you'd like to see request kind of thing those are I I really like
8:03
getting those and interacting with you guys with that
8:13
[Music] stuff uh across the way is I think
8:19
somebody's election office and it says fish family
8:24
Freedom sounds uh like a very Alaskan
8:30
type of campaign slogan that's what I'm looking for this is the Spring Hill Suites right
8:37
here downtown if you want to stay downtown I will say
8:43
that hotel prices here at least for right now are very high a lot of prices
8:50
are high but not as high as we would have thought for food and drink and that sort of thing it's not as excessively
8:57
expensive as we is I'm sure it is in certain places up north and more remote areas but um
9:05
anyway it's kind of interesting ZL Dorado the Gold
9:10
Rush we'll go look in some windows here a lot of native art and jewelry and
9:19
design um some beautiful beautiful artwork and jewelry
9:27
here and there's a lot of uh uh Native artwork and design as
9:36
well also for the comment section if you guys have any questions please let us know let me know in there and check out
9:44
the city walks virtual tours website.com there and here's a bunch of native
9:50
handmade Alaskan native artwork and crafts kind of exciting to see it's
9:57
really beautiful stuff
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yeah oh I was going to tell you about Fairbanks a lot of fur type themed stuff
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here and in Anchorage we saw a lot of that Fairbanks 30,000 people 9,000 in
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the area founded in 1903 2 years after
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this guy Bernett uh got off a steamboat basically because they
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couldn't go any further north he was trying to go somewhere else uh up the chaina river and they got
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stuck on a sandbar and they kind of kick him off the boat but some local
10:48
Prospectors as we are back here on kushman uh convinced him
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to uh that it would be a good place for a Trading Post and so sure enough he started
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Trading Post and 2 years later uh they incorporated as a town and then there was a Fairbanks Gold
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Rush uh around that time and sort of prospered for a while until
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about for a little while and then went back down until about World War I and then it became a geopolitically
11:27
strategic area and they started bringing in military uh in the late 30s and of course in World
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War II and then during the Cold War of course it's right over the pole from and
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across the ocean from across the sea from Russia the Bridgewater Hotel up
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there uh and they started building a lot of
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military bases and can't remember the name of the military base here
12:02
[Music]
12:08
anyway and then of course they found oil up on prudo Bay and they need to get
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it out of there so they built the pipeline in the' 60s 68 I think around
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that time and here's Bobby's downtown Greek
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restaurant um and so that boosted the economy
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significantly and it's still a trans transition point for that area
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in fact a little bit north of here you get on the Dalton highway to go up there uh and I think we're 200 miles or
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200 miles from the Arctic Circle up here in fact it's something about the north but it is
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the coldest city in North America or in the US above 10,000
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people we're going to go over here and get into a little bit of a residential area before coming back along the river
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and going through a couple Parks Sally looks like a bar and beastro
13:26
maybe what else can I tell you about Fairbanks you the athabascan people uh
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called this area this region home and there was no they haven't found
13:37
any evidence of a permanent settlement but several campsites and other evidence
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of uh people being in this area Fairbanks I think started at
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University in 19 I want to say 17 1917 uh University of Alaska
14:00
Fairbanks and it's got a there's a Thai restaurant um it's got
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a museum of the north that we're hoping to go to later in the week looks like
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it's got a really lot of really interesting uh
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cultural stuff there as well as some uh geophysical and natural history
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type stuff beautiful building up there we did go up to a Botanical Garden up
14:35
there Fairbanks is pretty well spread out as a city it's got It's pretty
14:43
sprawly and I think I'm commented earlier it's kind of got a there's these cities in these towns in the north and
14:50
they're just the weather and the environment up here is just pretty brutal and the buildings tend to show
14:57
that and of course it's expensive expensive to live up here and expensive to maintain these buildings so you know
15:05
they're not going to paint every couple years I love there's a a logous over
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there at the end of the parking lot there's a log house here these aren't like modern kit home
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logous these are look original like they've been here a while and a couple log houses over
15:26
here you can see they're G to insulate that roof and build by building
15:32
a second roof on top coming up on cow Street
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here and we're just going to do a kind of a one block Loop oh there's
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another cool old log cabin
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house the we went down yesterday to the elas
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range route two past Delta Junction along the Tanana
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River and did a couple hikes uh to see glaciers we got to see to the toe of one
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Glacier eventually found it um it was amazing but
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man the mountains and
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the topography are absolutely no joke
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man they are serious mountains just striking and gorgeous but add to that the Fall colors
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all the sort of birch and other sort of deciduous type trees and bushes are just
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orange and red mixed in with the black Spruce dark greens and mosses and stone
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it was just the colors were absolutely fantastic um I'll post
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some well you can look on traveling Mel mt's Instagram account my wife she's
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been posting a lot of stuff from there if you want to see those
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photos anyway it was awesome but around Fairbanks there are some sort of small
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what they call domes and hills and mountains but nothing as dramatic as
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that is down south we're kind of in the I I'm going
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to get corrected on this is if I'm wrong I should be uh but it's kind of rbrs is
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kind of in the center of the state not quite it's a little off but
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uh it's definitely on the
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interior you can see just all the Deciduous colors in here and it is it's
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what is it's early September early midep and uh so it's still early it was
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we left Livingston and it was that day I think it got up to 88 and it's been in
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the 80s with fire forest fire warnings as we are on Kellum Street k l
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l u m uh so it's the seasonality is a huge
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shift quite frankly I kind of like it I'm ready for fall
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but man it is just so the colors here are so beautiful you know everybody talks about the Northeast and New
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England colors which are stunning but man Alaska has got it going
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on uh we're on Second Avenue here I'm just going to cut over here see
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this looks like a park and
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maybe something of significance
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here looks that's in pretty good
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shape oh it's a church over here looks like an Episcopal Church
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we'll just go down here a half block cross over and there's a looks like a
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river access point over to the right we'll take a look at the river before heading back Upstream of the
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river so the I'll talk about this in a minute but kind of a neat
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old log building and they've got some Frontier
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version of a flying butress out here helping hold up the walls isn't
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that
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beautiful 1929 it was built circle around a little bit more see the
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other
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side that's a pretty large log structure all right we're going to cross
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over
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here so the China CH h e na flows in the Tanana
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River which is quite large uh and Brady and spread out you
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can see this is there had been a lot of rain but it's pretty ripping along here
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look at the leaves flowing by I I have to wonder if it's just
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because it's confined to Within these Banks and can't Meander like it
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might normally I'm not a stream ecologist or have a buddy who
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is I forget the name the science city does anyway
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uh they did have a massive flood here in the 50s I think 57
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maybe and the whole downtown area was under a
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couple feet of water and things were swept away and it was in August so about
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a month seasonally before now
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and they had to be pretty quick about cleaning
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everything up and getting back on track before the winter set
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in there's some iron work with salmon
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here look at they do a really nice job of keeping the
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parks beautified with flowers and trees and that sort of
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thing we are on First Avenue right now you're going to see another mural up
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here in a couple minutes and here's this other log building looks
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like it's been fenced off and it's no longer in use but it's a really neat
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building if you've watched this channel hold on I get distract if you watch this channel you know I get distracted here's
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some more iron work showing mountains that's kind of neat some variation
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anyway if you have watched this channel for a while you know that I do like a good porch and that porch is awwesome
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it's got plenty of room probably 8 to 10 ft
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covered benches it's usable space love it
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and kind of want to daydream
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about making that uh into something restoring
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it we're going to go down here and see those FL fls in a minute you can
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see kind of a view of downtown some more iron work with
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cranes take a
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picture [Music] um it is 2024 in this election season
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we've seen a lot of local and Regional politician signs not a lot of
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national politician signs which is kind of kind of a nice
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reprieve oh I was going to mention one of the significances of Fairbanks is I
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think it's the the northernmost uh destination of the
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Alaskan Railway and you can take a train from here down to tala and on to
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Anchorage and from there out to Seward if you'd like and I would like someday to do that we were going to do it this
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trip but the dates just didn't quite work out
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unfortunately one of the the downsides of traveling in the fall
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is sometimes the schedules are not as open there some
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Riverboat design
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[Music]
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is a Mexican restaurant I believe it was called Mexican dber dibert seems to be I
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think I'm saying that right could be debert uh seems to have a lot of signs out
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we'll go this way actually we'll cross over a little bit
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you see the Denali State Bank off to the right here behind this church there's a Denali state bank and
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then there's a McKinley bank and McKinley was the original European name
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for Denali and they've since
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reverted smold residual buildings over
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there there's quite a few bike paths here and surprising amount of solar
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panels uh I'm not seeing any right now but around town you will see quite a few
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buildings with solar panels given surprising given how far north we are I
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guess in the summer you get a good bit of sun but you don't get much in winter
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I there
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neat heart uh installation
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there we're on uh oh we're on baret which I meant to mention Barnett
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Street that uh was named after of course the Barnett
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that founded or founded the Oh The Trading Post and was the
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first mayor to their credit I'm just going to cross here
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hopefully I want to show you something one a couple cool
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bars but also this is the North End of the main line of the Alaska railroad I
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don't know that they actually uh will bring trains up this
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far I don't think they do uh this is the newspaper on the right
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here uh oh Marlo's Bakery I would try that
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out [Music] Dum uh I just want to kind of explore
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down here cuz there's a couple neat old buildings that Bakery building
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this Johnson River Enterprise is we're at driveway Street and Pioneer
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Road here this is part of the exploration part of this
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Channel It's kind I don't know it's kind of a neat old deal
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Alaska Central contractors there's also a lot of gold mining in this area still
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not big industrial mines so much as independent operators that get featured
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in places oh something smells good uh places
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like uh or channels like that Geo and stuff where they have their own equipment and
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they're pulling gold out and it's sort of small scale industrial this looks like a daycare facility so I'm not going
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to go over there I'm going to cut through here and go back to
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the main Drive
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and we'll cross back over the river and then we'll walk along the river to The Visitor
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Center few years ago a viewer commented
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oh that they were curious about how things smelled here or in any place and
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I thought that was such a great question and so I've been trying to include that
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off and on that information right now it smells like baked goods and it's making me very hungry but it's also got that
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deciduous fall wet Leaf smell uh combined with
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some um you know Pine Forest guess Spruce Forest
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smells it's really a nice fr
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to me
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[Music]
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cross
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anyway I have to wait for the light here I'm going to go for it
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this is Illinois
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[Music] Street still a lot of uh flowers
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[Music]
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this an old Catholic Church I believe have to find a sign to determine
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which one but it's got some age to it it's been around for a while I think
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[Music]
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Immaculate Conception
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Church from 19 14 maybe
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1911 was moved over here let's cross back over the
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China and we'll go to a public park it's kind of a Memorial Park and then
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we'll see about getting down along the river
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[Music] path we're going to Golden Heart
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Plaza it's called I think one of the nicknames for Fairbanks is the Golden Heart City I don't know where that comes
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from and yet so it
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is Morris I called it the Morrison Visitor Center it's the Morris Thompson Visitor
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Center can see one of the domes in the distance there that's a bike and foot bridge in the
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[Music]
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foreground kushman in first
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here's the Spring Hill Suites we got a little welcome
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here uh Anchorage is 360 Mi Arctic Circle is 200 Mi Barrow is 500 Miles
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Delta Junction 98 and Denali Park 120
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this is a old building seems to be dedicated to the Yukon Quest sled dog
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race which is 1,000 miles Fairbanks to White Horse uh Canada I'm not going to go in
36:49
looks like a store looks kind of interesting probably a gift shop
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it's an old building the New Horizons Gallery TV uh
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Studio Etc and at the also the fudge pot which
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is a dessert type place the clock tower over there is
37:21
playing some Chimes I'm not going to read out all these um plaque in the Golden
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Heart Plaza um but this is the statue is
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called laska's first family and it's native people with their dogs it looks
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like and a ton of informational plaques and Memorial plaques that you can read
37:46
if you are inclined and we were inclined and learned a lot about the area which
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is kind of neat uh another way to learn about the area and the culture here is to go to
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the Morris Thompson Memorial Visitor Center or Morris
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Thompson Visitor Center uh you can also learn about po lands
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there and that's where we're going now but this big glass structure off to the right is the Rabinowitz
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courthouse and court system building
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come
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we're getting into the a little bit of a nature smell here with the leaves and trees and it's quite
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nice I'm also often surprised how
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quickly you can get away from the hustle and bustle of urban sounds
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and uh traffic and all that stuff and it doesn't take much time to do that or
39:54
distance really especially if you have some trees and natural space Green Space
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uh I forgot that I was going to show you this so bonus so this is the Lend Lease Memorial
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and of course many people have heard about the Lend Lease agreements with the
40:13
UK in World War II but this um we also had a program with Russia because they
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of course were uh fighting the Nazis and
40:29
basically using their vast geography and numbers
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and uh weather and extreme weather to absolutely crush them with huge
40:44
expense but a lot of the materials that made that possible came from the United States and our
40:51
factories and they would fly I believe planes up here and then Siberian Partners Pilots would fly them over to
40:58
Russia uh for the war
41:07
effort I'm going to cross over here to get back onto the path along the
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river getting a little sunshine it's nice
41:37
the other reason is cuz there's a little Archway that I want to pass through when we get to the visitor
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center and I want to show you couple well one house that has a
41:49
bunch of solar panels which granted is not a huge data set to bolster my
41:57
argument about how many I've seen but I've seen a surprising number which is more than
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zero can see uh a house over there it's kind of looks like a little flower pedal or
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something but they've got them at a very steep angle facing south which is where your
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is going to be most of the year and uh a bunch of
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them we recently put a couple years ago put solar panels I guess last year last year yeah last year put them on and we
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were able to do so because of the inflation reduction act gave us a 30% tax credit and made made it affordable
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for us and it's a joy to watch to it's a
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joy to be self-sufficient in our power in fact we produce a surplus which feeds
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back into the grid and with net metering we end up paying
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zero electricity bills we just have a connection fee and we provide clean
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energy out to other people which is nice so this is the archway and people are taking photos
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over here cute photos oh it's a wedding C
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couple but they're Mo s l I'm just going to walk through here real
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quick get out of their picture go through real
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quickly super
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cute so this is the Morris Thompson cultural and Visitor
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Center and it's a it's where we saw that talk about the Aurora and they have
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started doing summer talks here once a month once or twice a month uh so we just lucked into it so we
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learned a lot about the Aurora that I didn't know and what to expect and how to view
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it places to view it so we will take a look here
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I want to show you these uh statues of baby crows that I
44:47
just love and this little Cops of uh birch trees but look at this isn't
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this aren't those funny those are
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great let's just walk in here real
45:10
quick 8 to 5 in the off season 8 to six in the summer
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they've got this great museum entrance we'll just do a quick walk through since we have time
45:44
[Music]
46:08
and they've got a lot of information about uh the cultural bits of Alaska the
46:16
pipeline construction uh military and life in the
46:23
interior a little bit of artwork and activities a couple uh what it's
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like to live here in the interior uh about arts and the
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winter and I know I'm just blazing through here but I don't want to make
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this the focus of
46:52
everything the creamery Dairy is where we went out last night to look at the
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um Northern Lights this is Morris
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Thompson is it
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it and I believe he was a governor excuse me sorry
47:28
[Music] another reason I don't want to spend too
47:34
much time in here is because I want to make sure you guys want to come see it yourself because it's an awesome place
47:41
and you can learn a lot we're going
47:46
to go back outside real
47:52
quick see a image of the [Music] Aurora Little Theater
48:06
there gift
48:15
shop thank you you're welcomee
48:30
all right well I want to thank you guys for joining us on this Fairbanks Alaska
48:37
walking tour virtual Virtual City Tour uh and I hope you enjoyed it I hope you come back and join us for more tours I'm
48:44
not sure where the next walk will be uh but it'll be next week so hope to see
48:51
you then take care and keep on stepping for
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