If you've never seen the midnight sun, it is a glorious sight indeed. You can never quite get over the fact that what your watch says and what the sun says don't exactly square up. On this night, nearby wildfires have lofted a smoky mist into the valley below, creating a natural filter for the sun's fiery orange glow. The sun's rays shimmer through the fog, creating a reddish haze across the valley. It's a perfect backdrop for something like … an album cover. Supposedly, the sun is down for two hours on this particular night, though it never truly goes away.

While everyone seems a tad happier - and a tad less insane - in the summer, I can't help but think that the charm of Fairbanks lies in the snow and ice. Take the new Museum of the North, for example. It's now fully up and operational at the University of Alaska. The stunning architecture is meant to evoke Alaska's glacial landscapes - but it somehow falls short when the luminous pinks and blues of the low-lit winter skies aren't bouncing off its whitewashed walls.

Still, the museum's exhibits (notably Craig Buchanan's junk-strewn Great Alaska Outhouse Experience and the conceptual prurient photography of Mark Daughhetee) are worth an afternoon stroll. And, of course, the building remains the most architecturally interesting of all the others in the state - that hasn't changed since last winter.

In Denali National Park (125 miles south of Fairbanks), we discover a cozy little restaurant called McKinley Creekside Café. It's full of Alaskan charm and tasty entrées like coconut-battered salmon and perfect Alaskan halibut and chips. Everything is going along swimmingly until a transformer blows in nearby Healy, cutting the electricity to the entire area.