Thanksgiving in Alaska

-Content by Jinbin Ma ’14 MBA-

When my friends heard of my Thanksgiving break would be in Alaska, their first reaction was “you don’t feel cold enough in Syracuse?”

After a ten hour flight from Syracuse to Anchorage, along with three other MBA classmates, we started our adventure to Aurora. If you think Syracuse is a “snow city,” then Alaska is like “snow world”. That was my first impression when I got off the plane and it was totally different from the cold weather in Syracuse. Everywhere was covered by snow and the city is surrounded by snowy mountains. During the first three days in Anchorage, we went to several state parks. The scenery was so beautiful. We were walking along the snow covered roads, throwing snowballs at each other and watching the sunset along the icy river.

On the forth day of the trip, we drove for seven hours from Anchorage to Fairbanks to see the best place to see Aurora. We stayed in Fairbanks for three days and stayed up until 4 am every morning to wait for Aurora. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather we did not see very much of Aurora. However, we still had lots of fun in Fairbanks. We visited the University of Alaska, Museum of the North, Ice Museum, and Santa Claus House in North Pole.  The best part was having the outside hot spring in the -10 Fahrenheit degree weather that was surrounded by snowy mountains. We also went to dog sledding in Fairbanks. Although it was freezing cold, we had so much fun in the forest with the sled dogs and beautiful views.

It was a wonderful trip that I will never forget. Since it was the winter season, many places and visiting center were closed, such as Denali National Park, boat cruises, and rafting. I have already marked on my calendar that I will go back to Alaska during the summer.