Play Ball!

The reason for our stop in Fairbanks was to go to a minor league baseball game. Not just any baseball game, but the Midnight Sun Baseball game. It is held every year on the solstice. The game starts at 10 PM and they don’t use lights.

The game doesn’t start until the evening so we had time to explore Fairbanks. We found a shop called the Roaming Root Cellar that sold only items made in Alaska. There were a lot of food items, from spice rubs to goose eggs to frozen yak meat. We bought a couple of items for future meals, like a pasta filled with salmon.

Next we tried to go to the Ice Museum. I do not recommend going to their website because the URL was hijacked. We drove by and decided it was too sketchy.

Instead, we stopped at Pioneer Village, a city park with a collection of log cabin buildings, a paddle boat, a train and a series of museums. The paddle boat had dioramas of towns from the outer reaches of Alaska. One building had a pioneer museum which was filled with a mish-mash of old items, from a dog sled to pelts to photos of the town founders. We walked by a house that had been owned by Judge Wickersham, the same judge whose house we visited in Juneau. The re-enactor asked if we knew about Judge Wickersham, and we said we said that we visited his house in Juneau! Apparently, the Judge founded Fairbanks and named it after his benefactor before moving to Juneau and becoming a representative in Washington for the territory of Alaska.

We also took a train ride around the park. The engineer really dressed for the job!

We are saving the best part of Pioneer Park for last! One of the log cabins had an artist displaying his work. He carved wood, antlers and horns. Outside the cabin were two rocking chairs. Greg sat in one because the other one was labeled as broken. This big guy decides to sit in the broken chair. Amy tried to warn him, but it turns out the chair was not broken. It was Justin, the artist. He put the sign up to keep people from sitting in his chair. His rescue Great Dane came by and demanded to be pet. Then we heard Justin’s life story: growing up in Alaska, going away to study art, going to LA to try to be an actor, working in a traveling jousting show, then returning to Alaska. He even built his own log cabin with wood that was reclaimed after a fire (it was half price that way). He built it himself with some help from a buddy because the logs were too heavy for one person. The buddy suggested that he had enough wood to make a loft. So now he works over the summer selling his art that he produces during the long winters. Justin is a true Alaskan!

The gates opened for the Midnight Sun game 8PM with first pitch at 10PM. This is the 120th Midnight Sun game. It’s a tradition that started in 1906 with a bet between two Fairbanks bars. Now it is listed in Cooperstown as one of the top 10 must see games. The hometown Alaska Goldpanners have a 50-14 record in the Midnight Sun game and have only lost three games since 1992. Because we’ve been traveling so much, it’s Greg’s first baseball game of the season. Play ball!