Alaska's regions
Interior Alaska
Sprawling area includes Fairbanks and Denali National Park
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The Interior's tours and attractions include museums, riverboats, gold mines, ice carving, music festivals and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the kingpin of the state's higher education system. UAF researchers focus on rocket science, earthquakes, the aurora, mining and northern agriculture.
Other fun things to see include bears, museums, flightseeing over the mountains, glaciers, the trans-Alaska pipeline, hot springs and the northern lights (September to April).
Parks and public lands
Denali National Park, the size of Massachusetts, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. National wildlife refuges are sometimes hard to reach, but they hold bears, moose and caribou and millions of migratory nesting birds.
The White Mountains National Recreation Area, northeast of Fairbanks, is available year round, as is the Chena River State Recreation Area east of Fairbanks. Several national wild and scenic rivers, perfect for rafting and canoeing, flow through the Interior.
Hotels and dining
Fairbanks has a full range of lodging and restaurants, and most towns along the highways have both a place to stay and a place to eat. Denali has summer-only lodging in "Glitter Gulch," just outside the park entrance.
Dining throughout the region is what one might expect in the Lower 48, but with fewer chain restaurants and a lot more salmon. The menus include American, Chinese, Italian and Mexican foods.
Climate and weather of Interior Alaska
Interior Alaska's climate is warm, often hot, in the summer. Temperatures in Fairbanks may reach the upper 80s in July and August. (In the winter, temps may bottom out below -40.)
Situated just below the Arctic Circle, the Interior has long days in the summer. At the solstice, Fairbanks has 24 hours of daylight and bright twilight.
The rainy season is late summer through autumn. The first stick-to-the-ground snow can be expected in Denali in September, and Fairbanks may get snow soon afterward. Most of the snow will be gone by late April, and spring comes in May.
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