Earlier this year my wife and I traveled to Ireland and stayed in castles and tiny homes, and now igloos and trains were next up.
Our trip started in the North, in Fairbanks, Alaska’s “Golden Heart City”, and ended on a glorious train ride later in Anchorage. With a regional population of more than 90,000, Fairbanks is the State’s largest interior city and served as construction headquarters for the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
Before our glorious train ride, we spent a few days at Borealis Basecamp — which, as you’d imagine, is a place where you can see the Northern Lights. White, domed igloos overlook a vast set of rolling hills and have large astronomy-like sky-pointing windows, perhaps the sort of living structures Mars colonizers might envisage.
The season had just started before Labor Day. Soon all the rolling green meadows would be covered in snow, camouflaging the igloos.
The various adventures on offer included a reindeer meet and greet, a helicopter tour and a one hour dog sled excursion. Because we arrived before the snow, our rig consisted of 10 husky dogs pulling an all terrain vehicle. We did a training run with Jessie Royer, 21-time Iditarod racer, who has been training her pack for the 2026 race.
Jessie was a very impressive guide, regaling us with the background stories of her endurance races. She has raised seven generations of dogs and pointed out that many people, especially city slickers like me, are familiar with dogs only as domestic pets and look at her dogs differently. She said that her dogs “are not fat but fit.” None of her 60 dogs have ever had a bath, nor would they want one, says Jessie: “stripping the natural canine oils from the pelt would be a disservice.”
Jessie admits she’s happier farther away from civilization and she certainly gets that in the Iditarod. When she leaves Anchorage at the start of the race, she does not cross a road for 1000 miles.
I had no real sense of Alaska’s expanse, and even seeing just a portion of it was humbling. Alaska’s Aleutian Islands cross over the 180th meridian, which separates Earth’s eastern and western longitudes. From a geographic perspective, this means some of the Aleutian Islands are located at the easternmost reaches of the Eastern Hemisphere while others are at the westernmost points of the Western Hemisphere. Thus, Alaska is the easternmost and westernmost State in the US.
At Basecamp, we ate at their restaurant, Latitude 65, which features, unsurprisingly, local fresh fare and overlooks the unspoiled hills and mountains. We had sockeye salmon, beet salad and elk medallions; since you asked, all remarkable.
At first we stayed in one of the cubes, which are beautifully designed and very comfortable. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out over 100 acres of untouched land. Another night we stayed in one of the classic igloos, which was more unique. Made from fiberglass, they have high, clear ceilings, gazing out at the starry Arctic sky. Although guests certainly come here to get away from it all, the availability of Wi-Fi is also welcome. I mean, to be honest.
Often when discussing museums or zoos, the question comes up about the propriety of collecting and taking items from where they are found and then putting them in a place far away. Some argue in favor, that people who would not otherwise get to see these things in their natural habitat, gain a newfound appreciation. I generally lean in that direction.
That can be the case when discussing terrain that has been tamed for places such as Borealis Basecamp. Plenty of trees and land were leveled, but if they weren’t, could I or you have seen or experienced this magnificent, singular terrain or had the perspective provided by the guides?
On our trip to Alaska I became aware of the constant struggle between access and preservation. It is a fascinating conundrum.
The train ride on the Denali Star was a dream come true. As a kid my grandfather had a massive train set, and the coolest cars were the passenger cars with domed tops. Now we were coursing our way south from Fairbanks through some gorgeously rugged terrain inside such a car.
Denali Star operates from mid-May to mid-September. The cars are elegant with comfortable wide seating and meals served with white linen. There were also viewing platforms, where we could experience the scenery flashing by and the wind whipping our faces.
It is a 12 hour excursion from Fairbanks to Anchorage but we broke the trip up over several days. The first leg took four hours into Denali. In 1917, Congress recognized the special nature of this place by setting aside two million acres to create a national park. In 1980, legislation expanded the park and designated those two million acres, now at the heart of Denali, as “Wilderness.” These lands make up one of the largest continuously protected areas in the world and are among the least-disturbed wild lands in America, appearing much as they did centuries ago.
It’s also Alaska’s most accessible wilderness. With accessibility comes a high demand for public use and thus we saw up close the tension between accessibility and conservation that I think will rage for generations to come.
I wanted to understand all the noise about the place’s nomenclature and discovered that Mt. McKinley got its name from gold prospector William Dickey in 1896, as a political tribute to then presidential candidate William McKinley, whom Dickey supported on the gold standard. The name of the tallest mountain in America was officially adopted by the federal government in 1917 and remained so until the Obama administration issued an order redesignating the mountain as “Denali”, when the National Park Service neared its 100th anniversary in 2016, to honor the mountain’s Indigenous Athabascan name.
It turns out President McKinley was a strong advocate for protectionist tariffs throughout his career, though his views fortunately evolved toward a more reciprocal trade approach by the end of his presidency. He is often dubbed the “Tariff King” or “Napoleon of Protection” for his unwavering support of high customs duties to protect American industries.
The name of the mountain reverted to Mount McKinley earlier this year when President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” Or, basically, “Undoing Anything That Obama Did.”
The remaining eight leisurely hours on the Denali Star to Anchorage went by too fast. The service on the train was topflight, and the food was fine. It’s not every day in the Lower 48 that I have reindeer penne Bolognese. In fact, it’s never. The taste was as rich and savory as the traditional version, but I certainly enjoyed the leanness of the reindeer. Eating local while in motion was certainly unique.
Yeah, I’m a city boy, but I was actually bummed when we got into Anchorage and saw parking meters, stoplights and tall buildings, after such a wonderful trip away from all that.
I still dream of igloos and trains.