Adventures in Alaska: Sled Dogs, Aurora Chasing, and the Perfect Proposal

My dream came true . . . I finally saw the northern lights!  Oh, yeah.  And Nathan proposed. 😉 It was wonderful and perfect and amazing and ridiculous.  But more on that later.

It all started when we decided to make the seven hour drive  from Anchorage to Fairbanks in hopes of catching a glimpse of the northern lights.  Now, seeing the Aurora Borealis has always been on my bucket list.  Some might even call it an obsession.  I sign up for Aurora forecasts, find myself constantly googling pictures of the northern lights, and often tell people how I would just die if I could witness the Aurora in person.  So it was a sort of given that we would travel to Fairbanks, which is known as the Aurora Capitol of the World.

Let me be clear.  Driving to Fairbanks at this time of year is no small feat. The day before we left, so many drivers slid off the road on their way to work Monday morning that the icy conditions made the front page of the Anchorage daily newspaper.  We immediately called the car rental office and requested they put snow tires on our vehicle.  They politely declined, assuring us we would have “no problem.”  Even after we explained we would be driving the minivan all of the way to Fairbanks, they still wouldn’t budge.

Needless to say, Nathan and I were rather nervous when we began our journey the following morning—and understandably so.  The road to Fairbanks, which travels through the isolated interior of Alaska, is long and remote (and as we soon learned, not very well maintained during the winter).  We later spoke with locals in Fairbanks who told us they avoid venturing out of town during this time of year at whatever cost.  They were amazed we’d decided to make the drive from Anchorage.  And in a minivan, no less.

Nathan spent most of the trip clutching the steering wheel, focusing so intently on the road he barely paid attention to the magnificent mountain scenery as we passed through the edge of Denali National Park.  He wouldn’t even have noticed the many adorable foxes prancing in the snow alongside the road had it not been for the obnoxious squeals of excitement I let out each time I saw one.

After what felt like an eternity, we finally arrived in Fairbanks. We each breathed in a deep sigh of relief and headed straight for Hoo Doo, one of the local breweries in town.  Still tense from the long drive, we began to bicker over random things as we sat sipping our IPAs.  Soon, we were in a heated debate over when exactly winter begins.  I took the objective stance that winter always begins on December 22, the winter solstice, while Nathan insisted its start date varies depending on several factors, such as geographical location, changes in the weather, and so on.  Certain that mine was the undeniably correct position, I suggested he ask the friendly looking couple sitting nearby, hoping to settle the matter once and for all.  As soon as Nate posed the question, I looked expectantly at the couple, confident they would return a verdict in my favor.  But to my utter surprise, the man agreed with Nathan that winter is a subjective term.  It turns out he is a farmer and very much in tune with seasonal changes, which are notoriously harsh in Fairbanks.  I guess I should have taken our audience into consideration before making that bet.  In the end, though, our stubbornness paid off because it resulted in a wonderful conversation with several locals we never would have met otherwise.

After we left Hoo Doo, we drove roughly twenty miles outside of town to our final destination: a dog mushing school called Just Short of Magic. When we arrived, Eleanor, the owner, greeted us with a warm hug and led us to our yurt, where we would be staying for the next few days.  And it really was magical.

Within minutes, Nathan had the fire going and the place was as toasty as a sauna.  But I had no interested in staying inside; I was on a mission.  I bundled up in the warmest clothing I had, grabbed the camera and tripod, and made my way into the middle of the clearing in front of the yurt.  As soon as I turned my head toward the sky, I saw it.  The Aurora Borealis was dancing above me, a brilliant display of green.

I’m not generally one to believe in fate, but this trip was an exception.  In anticipation of our visit to Alaska, I had spent weeks obsessively monitoring the Aurora forecast.  As chance would have it, we’d booked our stay in Fairbanks during the week the Aurora activity was scheduled to hover around “6” or “7,” which is about has high as it ever gets.  And there I was, finally witnessing the green lady as she swirled and danced across the sky.  It was unreal.  I stood there for a long time and watched in amazement, transfixed by the beauty of this phenomena I’d been dreaming about for so long.

Eventually, the cold got to me and I told Nathan I needed to go inside and warm up for a few minutes.  Little did I know, this was the opportunity he had been waiting for.  Unbeknownst to me, he’d been in contact with Eleanor over the past weeks and arranged for her to have champagne and chocolates for us.  The problem was that I wouldn’t cooperate: whenever he thought of an excuse to sneak away, such as grabbing something for me from the car, I would offer to go instead or tell him I didn’t need it.  So when I went inside the yurt, he finally got the chance to run over to Eleanor’s house.

When I came back outside, Nathan handed me a glass of champagne and I immediately realized what was coming.  Because the men in the movies so often hide the ring in the bottom of the glass, I began chugging my champagne.  When I finished, however, the glass was empty.  I glanced toward Nathan, who was standing awkwardly beside me.  Then he asked me if I remembered when we first met.  I responded, “Of course.  We had a picnic at Saint Edwards Park on Lake Washington and watched the sunset while Rupal played in the water.”  I looked at him again, waiting.  Still nothing.  Eventually, after a long pause, he got down on one knee and—after at least a minute of rambling about being best friends and how he wanted get old and “wrinkly” together (yes, those were his words)—he finally posed the question I’d been waiting for.  It may not have been a smooth, scripted proposal like you see in the movies, but it was so us.  For that reason, it was perfect.

The next morning, we went for a sled dog ride with Eleanor (actually, the
the dogs pulled us around in an ATV because snow pack wasn’t quite deep enough to pull a sled).  The dogs jumped up and down with excitement as she began to tie them into their harnesses, eager to be on the team selected to run that morning.  Nathan fell in love with several of them, and we contemplated sneaking one of the puppies away inside our jackets.

It was a beautiful morning for a ride, and I immediately understood why some people dedicate their lives to mushing.  I was especially impressed by how well the dogs responded to Eleanor’s commands, even though they were barely louder than a whisper. Still, I couldn’t help but think that each of them deserved to sleep curled up on a warm bed inside the house, showered with ridiculous amounts of love attention like our spoiled mutts at home.

Later that afternoon, we visited the Chena Hot Springs Resort and had a delicious lunch made with vegetables grown in the resort’s fully geothermal-powered greenhouse.  We then returned to our yurt for a quick nap before heading back into Fairbanks for a professional”Aurora Chasing” tour.

At around 10pm, the guides picked us up in their high-tech “Aurora Chasing” van, equipped with fancy photography gear and a flat screen TV that displayed the local weather radar in real-time.  Although the clouds threatened to obstruct any view of the lights, the guides drove us roughly 80 miles out of town to a place where we could see the Aurora dancing vibrantly overhead.  Just before the clouds covered the sky good, one of our guides managed to capture this reenactment of Nathan’s proposal, and my heart melted all over again: