Alaska is cold, but there is the aurora…

[Note: This is really long and really late. But there are pictures!]

Anniversaries that have a round number need to be roundly celebrated. Our 40th wedding anniversary was in February, so we decided to splurge a bit and try to see the Aurora Borealis (northern lights), and one of the best places to do that is Alaska. 

A real challenge with Alaska in winter is, well, it's cold. Really cold. And probably snowy. So we decided to make it as easy as possible for us, and joined a tour specifically organized for seeing the aurora. I had never been on an organized tour like this before, so it was going to be interesting. Mrs Notthat found a suitable tour by Melita Trips - a big selling point was that they had a guest speaker that would give multiple lectures during the trip, astronomer Dennis Mammana, who had been highly recommended by friends.

Rick and Eileen, our tour guides, posing in front of a huge bear. They were amazing at dealing with all the issues that randomly popped up during the trip. (Rick and Eileen. Not the bear.)

The trip started with a flight from Seattle to Fairbanks. (Well, it really started the day before with us flying to Seattle, but that wasn't officially part of the tour.) All of this flying was my first time on a plane since early 2020 (and all that that implies). 

The first surprise was that there was a water line break in the kitchen at our Fairbanks hotel - our rooms were fine, but there was no way we were going to get to have our first dinner together as a group there. So we ended up eating at Big Daddy's BBQ ("Northern Most Southern BBQ") (it was really good). After that, we checked in then got together for our first Dennis lecture. (These lectures were really good and helped so much with the rest of the week.)

We then got on the bus and headed for the World Ice Art Championships. The sculptures were astonishing.

How is it possible to get that kind of detail?

Such great imagination!

Seriously - everywhere you looked you saw astonishing sculptures.

After that, we all got back on the bus and drove out to a dark area for our first shot at seeing the aurora. 

Auroras are a bit flaky. They are not tied to a precise schedule. Or a loose schedule. They laugh at the word "schedule." You never really know if they are going to appear or not. The best you can do is put yourself in a good position to be ready if they show up. There are websites that give you an idea of your chances of seeing anything, and those websites were not very encouraging that first night. 

And they were right.

But, we all got a chance to try our hands at taking night shots, and there were many stars to look at.

A number of people on the tour brought really nice equipment to take pictures. Red lights were used when light was needed just to avoid blinding people whose eyes had adjusted to the dark.

This is just me holding my phone and taking a shot of the stars. I was a bit astonished it came out this well.

The thing to keep in mind, this is our first day! We flew to Fairbanks, ate BBQ (!), checked into our plumbing-challenged hotel, had our first lecture, saw amazing ice sculptures, and got to stand around in the dark waiting for the aurora. At about midnight we loaded back onto the bus and headed back to the hotel. (A few determined people stayed up once we got to the hotel and managed to see a mild display of auroras at around 3 AM. I was not yet that desperate.) (But I could be later.) (Man I was hoping it didn't come to that.)

On day two, we first went to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska (go Nanooks!), where that picture of Rick and Eileen with the photo-bombing bear was taken. Next, we went to one of the most unexpectedly fascinating places - the Poker Flat Research Range. They do a variety of things here, but the real star is that they shoot rockets into the auroras to study them. These are not huge rockets with people on them, but small rockets based on missiles that they are able to load up with experiments.

First a lecture by Dave about what this facility is about. I loved this! (Picture by Rick.)

Next, we got to go inside a launch pad. A bit oddly, we were not allowed to take pictures in there. (Picture by Rick.)

Tours are not a normal thing done at this facility, so this was definitely a big tour-related bonus.

After that, we headed to the Chatanika Lodge for dinner and to wait for it to get dark for our second attempt at seeing the aurora. The lodge is normally closed on Mondays, but, just for us, they opened for dinner and to provide a nice warm place to hang out while waiting for aurora excitement to break out.

Chatanika Lodge. There was a large area in back where we could watch for the auroras. And a bar for when we needed a break from watching for the auroras.

So many dollar bills! They were on almost every bit of ceiling and wall!

We hung out there until a bit after midnight. By 10:30 or 11:00, it was feeling like we were getting skunked again. 

And then, there they were!

This was so cool! The went like this for about an hour. No way I expected a photo like this from just my phone.

A bit after midnight we headed back to the hotel. We were all thrilled - as I said, there is no guarantee that you will see an aurora on a trip like this, and after the first night, the possibility that we might not see any felt a bit too real. 

But we saw them! The rest of the trip was just gravy! (Spoiler alert: It was going to be REALLY good gravy.)

For the third day, we checked out of the hotel, got on the bus, and headed to the Chena Hot Springs Resort. Along the way we stopped at the Great Alaskan Bowl Company, then a stop to see the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Mrs Notthat and I in front of the pipeline, waiting our turn at hopscotch (see the person in the background). (Picture by Rick.)

It amuses me that they have to put radiators to dissipate heat on the pipeline.

The Chena Hot Springs Resort is really something. It's in the boonies. (Granted, Alaska is 99% boonies.) There is no cell service and erratic WiFi, so it feels even more remote than it is. The resort has a lot to do beyond soaking the hot springs, but the main thing we were all there for was the aurora. After another Dennis lecture, we prepared for another cold night of trying to see them.

There is a nice dark field you can walk to where you can watch the aurora, or there is a snow coach tour to the top of Charlie Dome Mountain.

Our waiting snow coaches. These things sounded like they would be fun! Ha!

Each snow coach had a main unit with seats for three and the driver, and a trailer with benches along the sides to seat eight. Mrs Notthat and I got to sit in the front with the driver. 

This picture does not remotely capture how rough this trail was. Or how these snow coaches were so completely lacking in any kind of ride-smoothing suspension.

It was a rough, slow, noisy ride up to the top of Charlie Dome. It turned out to be worth it though. There were a couple yurts that you could sit in to warm up, but the real show was having a great view of the dark skies.

The only lights were the arriving and departing snow coaches. But even that didn't affect the aurora.

The aurora got started before we got up there. And they were way better than what we had seen the night before.

Again, this is just me holding my phone. Astonishing!

The aurora went on like this for quite a while. The auroras were lighting up the horizon. I remember wondering to Mrs. Notthat what it would be like to actually be under the aurora. We took several breaks in the warming huts, and finally went out for one last look before catching a snow coach back down. 

You'll never guess what happened next.

The aurora went right over the top of us!

It was spectacular. People were gasping. Shutters were furiously clicking. I took this video, starting at one horizon and panning straight overhead to the other horizon.

The people with proper cameras got amazing shots, but what I managed with my phone were only a small bit short of amazing. After half an hour or so, the aurora calmed down and suddenly the wind was REALLY cold and it was REALLY late and we managed to catch a snow coach back down. I thought it would be nice to ride in the back this time and let someone else get to sit up front. 

I was an idiot.

The ride in the back going down the mountain was remarkably uncomfortable. We were all sliding on the seats towards the front, squishing the people at the front. I spent the ride down desperately trying to brace myself so I didn't completely flatten the poor person to my left. That ride took forever (these things are not fast, and even if they were, they couldn't go very fast due to the roughness of the trail). We were so happy to finally make it back to the resort.

The next morning, during our next Dennis lecture, he said that on a scale of 1-10, what we had seen two nights ago he would rate at about a two. What we had seen last night though, was an easy nine. It was truly remarkable that we were in the right place in the right conditions. We would see some aurora on other nights, but nothing would match what we had seen that night. 

The rest of our stay there was spent catching up on sleep and doing some other activities. The resort uses the hot springs not just for recreational swimming, but to generate their electricity, heat all the buildings, and heat the enclosed gardens where they grow most of the fresh produce served in the restaurant. 

The plants all grow using hydroponics - no dirt is involved!

Next we toured their Ice Castle.

More astonishing ice sculptures.

The ice bar. What would an ice bar use to serve their drinks in?

One of the coolest things was that they made martini glasses out of ice. Here is a link to a video showing one being made.

The ice martini glasses are not proper souvenirs since they, well, are just ice. So the tradition is to smash them out front.

It was so weird to see all these shattered ice martini glasses from previous shatterings. It really looked like bits of glass all over the place.

The highlight of the next day was a ride in a dog sled.

This was not nearly as comfortable as it looks. Still, pretty cool!

The ride itself was a lot rougher than I had expected, and it was a bit wild how we would slide around corners. All in all, I'm glad I can say I did that but I did not feel like I wanted to take a second lap. After we had all gotten our rides, we got to go pet the dogs. 

It was a lot of fun wandering around and petting all these dogs!

Mrs Notthat petting a couple of our sled dogs.

And that's about it. The next day we took a bus back to the hotel in Fairbanks, then the next day we got up wildly early to fly back to Seattle. 

This was a once in a lifetime trip. We were so fortunate to have such a spectacular aurora display - it's not uncommon to have trips like this only see minor displays. It made things so much better to be part of a group - not having to deal with rental cars and getting the lectures and tours were such huge bonuses.

At Chena - the owner likes to collect aircraft and fire engines.

Of course there were issues that came up (Alaska Airlines did remarkably poorly at handling a group, there were some minor bus issues, and a few other things that happened), but Rick was great at keeping everything on an even keel. I would not hesitate to recommend Melita Trips for this tour.

A huge thanks to him and Eileen for making this all fun, and Dennis for the education!

That's it - move along…

PS: One interesting thing - it only snowed on us once, and it was pretty light and on the next to last day there. We did have an abundance of cold though.

PPS: I just assumed that Alaska in general was mostly a fairly high elevation. It turns out that Fairbanks sits a bit below 500 feet. MUCH lower than I would have expected.