Day5,6: Fairbanks

Our abode in Fairbanks was a really cute cabin...heavenly, may I add! It was surrounded by woods, right in the vicinity to almost all places of interest in Fairbanks. I would highly recommend staying here, even if it is for a couple of nights. The owner, Alina is an amazing host, and made us very comfortable with the cabin and had a great stocked up kitchen. Check out her cabin (Forget-me-Not-Cabins) for sure!!

Forget-me-not cabin, and Frodo and his belly-rubs :)

Fairbanks is a small town with a relatively big University of Alaska campus. Early next day we decided to visit the university (10-15 min drive from our cabin). We were interested in visiting LARS (Large Animal Research Station), that houses muskoxen, caribou and reindeer. 

Bob thinks he is boss

There is an  hour info tour of the facility, after which you can watch the muskox being fed. That was quite a novel experience...apparently even though food is freely available as pellets/supplements, the males have to establish dominance by head-butting each other...every single day!! What's with men ;)! We also briefly visited the Alaska Museum (also part of the AU), but like any museum, you need a whole day or at least half a day to do justice to all the exhibits. 

From here we proceeded on to Chena Hot Springs (60 miles East of Fairbanks). It is powered entirely using geothermal power source and research here is focused on alternative power engineering, and has a well-established greenhouse (left) to produce vegetables throughout the year. 

There is also a beautiful Ice Museum, that you must surely check out. It is free and has amazing sculptures, again powered by geothermal energy throughout the year! There is also an ice bar (on the right) where we had apple martinis...it was good! The actual hot springs was even better after the chili museum :) 

We spent about an hr or maybe more here, talking with the locals, and the other tourists, and decided to have dinner at the restaurant. Food is on the pricier side, and everyone recommended the salmon, but it wasn't as great as it was worth. The Chena Special Salad was awesome and was made with veggies from the in house greenhouse :) Content and tired we drove back to our warm cabin...

Sun shining upon the hot springs at 8 pm.