"It is not ignorance, but knowledge which is the mother of wonder."--Joseph Wood Crutch
I know most of you are thinking "Oh noooo. Not another car museum story! All car museums are boring unless you're really in to cars!" Think again my friends! While I was in Alaska a few weeks ago my friend Sarah and I had a spontaneous day trip to the museum. Neither of us are car enthusiasts by any means, but we do love older cars and cars that are a bit different from the norm.
That is EXACTLY what this museum was like. Each car in there had something unique about it either in appearance or something innovative and different for its time. Accompanying each car were outfits showcasing the fashion of the decade/year the car was from. I'd never seen this done before and thought it added a very nice touch, especially for women who were dragged in by their significant others. They would at least enjoy looking at odd cars and really gorgeous antique clothing.
Each car had a plaque next to it describing just what was unique and especially interesting about each car, which was extremely helpful for non car enthusiasts like myself! Not only did they have cars, but they also had antique snowmobiles and bicycles. They even had a car you could sit in and take pictures with. Next to that was also clothing you could try on from the different decades represented by the antique cars.
Several of my favorites were cars that had umbrellas instead of roofs, fringe lined roofs, all wooden bicycles, the first steam powered car, very old electric cars, and of course the very first snowmobile. We spent a surprisingly long time in there, about 2.5 hours. There was so much variety that we didn't pass up looking at a single car. The shapes and sizes of cars today have become so streamlined and no car is really all that different from the next. However, this museum had such a crazy amount of variety that I had no idea cars were so different even from one model to the next. Antique cars were truly a work of art. I genuinely wish that there was so much variety today. You can really tell how much fun the engineers had designing these cars.
There's no doubt in my mind how the Fountain Head Antique Auto Museum become the number one attraction in Fairbanks according to yelp. The variety and quality of the cars and antique clothing was nothing short of astonishing. The museum was very fairly priced and the staff were extremely knowledgeable and you could really tell that they cared about their work. While you peruse the museum you can even see through the gigantic windows into the shop where they work on restoring the antique cars. Definitely don't miss out on this, even if you aren't a huge fan of cars. This place will give you a very pleasant surprise.
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."--Mark Twain
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