"C" Lazy Moose RV Park

The Salcha River State Recreation Site (10 minutes' drive) has boat launch points and lakes brimming with king salmon, Arctic grayling and northern pike. There's further fishing to be found on the edge of Fairbanks at the Tanana Lake State Recreation Area (50 minutes), along with walking and biking trails, swimming beaches, boat hire and paintballing. If you take your binoculars to the Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge (an hour), you'll find a surprising array of feathered and other wildlife close to the city limits, from visiting Canada geese and pintails to moose, red fox, Arctic shrews and ermine. In Fairbanks, Pioneer Park has been proving a major draw since the 1970s, with museums devoted to pioneer, railroad and Native Alaskan history, as well as a narrow gauge old-time steam train through a replica Gold Rush township, and a traditional fairground. There's more history along with a touch of myth and magic to be found at Santa Claus House in the aptly, if wrongly-named, town of North Pole (30 minutes): originally a canny marketing stunt by a local shopkeeper in 1949, the 'house' has picked up global fame and understandably gets quite a lot of letters. Santa wins the prize for making vast journeys, but Alaska's oil pipelines come a close second: the Alyeska Pipeline Visitor Centre an hour away shows a section of the mighty network above ground, along with an exhibition explaining the feats of ingenuity and engineering making it possible. Further off, just under two hours away, the Aurora Ice Museum celebrates Alaska's other abundant resource in a frozen building filled with ice sculptures.