Fairbanks Midnight Sun Festival

Every year Fairbanks hosts a Midnight Sun festival to celebrate the summer solstice. That is, after all, one of the most distinctive things about living at this latitude. On the longest day of the year, the sun sets at 12:48 am and promptly rises again less than two hours later at 2:44 am. That's a long day...even the darkness isn't truly dark. You can read outside with no illumination at 3 am, no problem. It's probably the most disconcerting thing about living here, and my least favorite feature of an otherwise idyllic time of year. I am ALMOST reconciled to it by the festival.

This is a big event for this area. Supposedly they expected 40,000 people to descend on the downtown this year. The event runs from noon to midnight and of course no electric lighting is required! We went quite early, coming in at about 1:30, but the crowds were pouring in by the time we escaped at 4. There's lots of booths, nothing outrageously cool as far as crafts, but many neat local clubs. For most people the entertainment and the food are more than attractive enough to bring them out in swarms. There was also a petting zoo and pony ride and kids rides to amuse the little ones. Once Connor saw the bouncy castle five seconds after our arrival, mommy got no peace until Connor got to do this:

Connor's favorite feature of any major amusement activity like this is face painting. He wanted a whole face spiderman mask but wasn't patient or still enough in the artist's opinion to get it, so he reconciled himself to a small spiderman face instead. Let me tell ya, that guy took his face art seriously.


He also vastly enjoyed the fire truck...the fireman was sweet and the perfect person to be ushering small children through the fun of sitting in the "hot seat". Thanks, Fairbanks Fire Dept, for making hundreds of little ones feel so special!

The kids got to munch on usually verboten treats. Timmy got a frozen banana sans chocolate dipping, while Connor enjoyed a kids' scoop of strawberry ice cream and cotton candy. He also snaked some of mommy's coveted cinnamon sugar pecans and declared them "tasty!"



Connor loved the pony ride. They led the children on these sweet little ponies in a slow trot around the river park.


Here's a pic of Connor admiring the view of the Chena river and the boaters below. He wants to boat badly, but mommy isn't trusting of Timmy's sense of self preservation or her own boating skill to go without daddy or grandparent. Any volunteers to take Connor out on his first canoe? (hint, hint Grandpa!)