Alaska

We have really been hitting some bucket list items the past two years. Some of them on purpose (I love my husband but heliboarding is not a wait until you retire idea) and some thought out (pyramid hotel view in Egypt). My tip for this post is: don’t wait. You never know what can happen and if you can find a way, do it now! That brings me to this past October. The travel bug started itching again and I had a break coming up. I decided that I wanted to see the northern lights. This has been on my bucket list since I found out what they were and was actually #1 on that list. If you are interested in seeing the northern lights you have probably heard of the places to see them. Mainly Iceland or Norway. I looked at the ticket prices…ouch! They were steep with such short notice. So I began researching the northern lights and I learned something. While those are great places to see the northern lights and many people do (thinking of one friend in particular) they are also close to water. This, along with wind, can mean many days/nights of cloud cover. At those ticket prices, I was looking for a guarantee (I know there is no guarantee with northern lights, just wanted something more promising). This led me to Fairbanks, Alaska. When you type in the best places to see the northern lights Fairbanks, Alaska does come up. Due to its inland location you can possibly avoid the cloud cover. The tickets prices were ok, so the planning began! I knew nothing about Fairbanks, Alaska except that I wanted to see the northern lights so I looked up other things to do with first priority being northern lights. I decided to book our northern lights tour for the first night. That way, if we did not see them the first night we could continue to try every night until we left. I found Aurora in Alaska. I would book with them again in a heartbeat. They actually offer a guarantee!! They only head out when chances are strong and they reach out to you that day to let you know what is happening. If the chances are poor, you have 3 choices: full refund, reschedule or proceed anyway. By going the first night, I was planned to reschedule for each day until we left. We ended up going out the first night. I was nervous as I heard other people in our van say that their friends tour had been cancelled due to weather. That is when I learned even more about this company. They have private land outside of Fairbanks where it is darker (and in our case, the air is cleaner). As you can see, Aurora in Alaska did not disappoint! On the drive out of Fairbanks to their land (about a 40 minute drive total) we stopped at the pipeline. We learned a little about it and were able to take some pictures. Then it was on to their property. Within a half an hour of being on their land the northern lights became visible. We then got to experience the lights for about two hours and see how they changed as it got darker. Their land was bare, but they had a trailer that had heat and they gave you reindeer hotdogs to cook over a fire. They had hot chocolate too. It was cold but a great experience.