Ten miles to the northwest, the north and south peaks of Mount McKinley loom over us like sentinels of the fortune of Mother Nature herself, though they seem a snowball's throw away. It's around five p.m., but the sun remains intense, just as it does pretty much the whole time we're in Alaska. Though we're surrounded by snow, it's hot enough to remove our jackets. We realize man has no business being here - we're witnesses to something that represents little more than a postcard to the majority of people.

Though residents report feeling reenergized in the summer, my internal clock's tendency to wake me up at four a.m. each day we're here is causing me to beg to differ. The hotels claim to have blackout curtains, but we seem to have differing­ opinions on the definition of blackout. You've seen Insomnia, right? It's not quite that bad, but I can't seem to nail down my required eight hours of beauty sleep either.

"I get sluggish in winter," says Dan Unkerskov, head brewer at Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling Co., where a gaggle of classic Alaskan characters gathers every Friday during the summer for free beer. "In summer, we all get sleep deprivation without realizing it. It's definitely cool to sit outside at two a.m. and read a book."

Silver Gulch is one of numerous Alaskan microbreweries churning out excellent suds, though its motto is more noteworthy than its Pick Axe Porter. "Fairbanks: Where the people are unusual and the beer is unusually good." When we meet Fairbanksan Justin Rousseau at the brewery, he does little to challenge this theory.