Day: March 5, 2026

Latitude 65, north of Fairbanks AK

September 20, 2025

On several of my trips around the US and Canada I have seen signs indicating I was crossing the 45th Parallel – or a point halfway between the equator and the North Pole. When I saw a brochure in the Visitor Center for the Latitude 65 Restaurant I assumed it must be at or above the 65th Parallel. I was already further north than I had ever been but if I was this close I HAD to cross that line…

After stopping at the Trans Alaska Pipeline pullout I got back on Hwy 3 and continued driving north. The total distance from Fairbanks to the restaurant is about 45 miles.

When I was climbing a fairly substantial mountain, as I approached the top my GPS told me to turn left. I was immediately put on a dirt road and my GPS advised me I still had 3 1/2 miles to go! After driving a short distance on what became a rough, washboard road I thought “who in their right mind would put a restaurant way out here???”

When I finally arrived this is what I found:

I call them alien pods but in reality they are part of Borealis Basecamp – a niche facility aimed at folks who want to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights).

Yes, the restaurant was here, too – but was in a large yurt with a view.

The photo above shows the kitchen and storage building and a small yurt out back. A much larger yurt was on the other side of the main building, with a fabulous view.

From what I have read on their website, people pay over a thousand dollars per night to stay in one of the “igloos” which have clear fiberglass ceilings, hoping that they will be here on a night – a) when it is not overcast, and b) when the lights are actually visible. I have yet to see them, anywhere, but will have one minor sighting later in my trip.

In addition to the “igloos” there are some “cubes” for people who want a little more room, although I believe they need to go outside to see the lights, or look through a normal sliding glass door.

This was the road as I was leaving:

There were several places where there were signs like this:

When I got back out to the Highway I headed south towards Fairbanks. I stopped at a large sign I had seen as I drove north.

The road I was on, Highway 3, continues north to a town called Livengood, then becomes Highway 11 – also known as the Dalton Highway. It is a very dangerous road, which is in notoriously poor condition and favors big, heavy trucks. I don’t believe rental car agencies allow their vehicles to be driven on the Dalton Highway.

I wasn’t even near Livengood and from there it would have been 115 miles to get to the Arctic Circle, and another 299 miles to the end. I believe I’ll just settle for getting as far as the 65th Parallel, thank you very much.

North of Fairbanks, Alaska

September 20, 2025

I drove to Fairbanks yesterday after having spent some time in Denali National Park. I didn’t arrive until evening and went straight to my Airbnb which was north of town.

I was surprised to learn that Fairbanks, which recently overtook Juneau as the second largest city in Alaska, isn’t really that big. It has a city population of around 32,500, although there are neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area that could arguably increase the number if pooled together.

Although I will spend two nights here I will only be here one full day, as I will have a long drive tomorrow to get back down near Glennallen. This was more of an orientation stop and I will come back later in my trip to spend three nights and two full days.

When I first left the Airbnb to drive downtown this was the first thing I saw:

There wasn’t any snow on the ground while I was here so there was no activity at this venue, but I will visit a Musher Museum when I come back to Fairbanks later in my trip. I stopped at Walmart to replenish my food supply and then drove around town a bit to get my bearings. I was at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor Center downtown when it opened.

I picked up maps and brochures so I could find out what was open and what wasn’t. This antler arch was out back:

The sign said there were over 100 antlers but I didn’t count them. If you’ve ever been to Jackson, Wyoming they have some much larger arches at all four corners of a city park there, but this wasn’t bad for Fairbanks. This one was mainly moose antlers, with some elk and perhaps caribou thrown in.

One of the brochures I picked up was for a restaurant called Latitude 65 which I will describe in more detail in the next post. It is further north of town, and as I drove up Hwy 2 towards the restaurant I saw a turnout area for the Trans Alaska Pipeline! I am aware of its existence but never even thought I would see it, and here it was – right next to the highway:

It had come up from underground just north of here.

The pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay at the top of Alaska all the way down to Valdez, where the crude oil is loaded onto tanker ships.

There were other signs discouraging people from climbing on it (it isn’t a toy, people) and also asked that there be no graffiti or other stickers attached.

There was also a small display explaining what “pigs” are in the oil pipeline universe. They are used inside the pipeline to keep things from building up inside. When it was being built there was a wax buildup which pigs, like the one shown below, cleared out. The sign indicates that now the oil is constantly flowing past this point at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit so wax is no longer a problem.

This is a newer version of a pig which helps maintain the flow of oil. You can see on the signs that the pipeline is maintained by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, and their white crew-cab pickup trucks made up the vast majority of vehicles I saw as I drove along parts of Highways 2 and 4. The pipeline runs roughly parallel to those two roads, though I would see it in the distance some places.

I will continue with the restaurant I was heading to in the next post.