Alaska Trip - Day 9 (August 24, 2009)

Just to let you know, this new version of Blogger doesn't have a spell checker yet, and I'm tired, so this is probably filled with typos. 

We decided the day before to drive up to Fairbanks and thereby see more of Alaska, rather than spending another day in Denali limited in what we could do by the weather.  So, this morning, we saw the last few things we really wanted to see before we left the park.  For Ed, this included a stop at the dog sled kennels.  It took a little bit of hunting in the rain, but we found it, and the interpretive information they have in one of the cabins there was very interesting.

We also made 1 last stop at the showers for Ed and Jeanette, and while they were in there I cooked us some breakfast and dropped off some postcards at the park's post office.  Then a short stop back into town for Jeanette since they missed some of the stores while they were rafting the day before, and then we were off.  From Denali there's really only 1 way to Fairbanks - just keep heading North and then curving East on state road 3.  Fairbanks is in te eastern 1/3 of the state, but otherwise is right in the middle of the state.

I was just going through our picture from the day trying to remember what all we did - WOW!  I was confused at first because I couldn't believe we did so much in 1 day.  I guess it helps that there's daylight for almost 18 hours at that time of the year.  Somehow we didn't take many picture on this day.

The drive up to Fairbanks was pretty from what I remember.  We passd through some "towns" that seemed to be little more than signs along the roadside.  Most of the towns were inhabited almost exclusivley by native Alaskans.  I forgot how long we drove, but it was several hours.

Finally we arrived in the Fairbanks area.   Before we went into the city, we consulted Ed & Jeanette's guide book and found the northern most brewery in the world - just north of the city.  It looked like a cool place, but unfortunately it was closed.

The guide book also told us that a portion of the Alaska Pipeline was close by, so we stopped there as well.  It was pretty cool to see - bigger than I realilzed.  They had some nice interpretive stuff there too that explained a lot of interesting stuff.

Sarah showing you the diameter of one of the pipes. 

Oh man - Jeanette's going to kill me for this.

Sarah being a spazz . . . again.

While we were just North of the city, I realized this is the farthest North I'd ever been.  So, we took a picture of the GPS to record it - 64.5+ degrees North Latitude!

On the way into the city the guide book directed us to another place called Pioneer Park (http://www.co.fairbanks.ak.us/pioneerpark/).  The description made it sound a little wierd, but we stopped anyway. 

This place was unlike any place I've ever been before, and it's very hard to decribe it.  Essentially, if I understand it correctly, over a period of years the city of Fairbanks moved historically important homes, buildings, businesses, etc. from the town center and brought them here to create a ake "pioneer" town.  It kind of felt like a cross between a living museum / fairgrounds, but it was nearly empty. It was like what I imaging state fair grounds to be like when the fair is not around.  Each house or business was staffed with a volunteer who sits there all day giving interpretive tours to visitors.  There are also businesses there, like unique gift shows, food vendors, and silly things like a place where you can spend $5 to sit in a giant freezer to feel what a -40 degree Fairbanks winter feels like. 

Apparently Fairbanks used to be quite a wild town.  This was the last stop on the way to the gold fields during the Alaska goldrush days, so there were a lot of characters here.  There was the usual "100 - 1 ratio of bars/brothels to churches" type thing, gun fights, etc. 

You could walk inside this huge old paddlewheeler, and the entire inside had minature dioramas of Fairbanks and tiny towns in the area as they looked in the late 19th and early 20th century.  These dioramas were amazing, but very old and you could tell they hadn't been touched in decades. 

This whole place was so bizarre, and just had a weird feeling about it, but it was fun, and I imagine it's packed on warm summer weekend days.  It kind of felt like one of those "Americana" type road-side attractions - things you'd find driving along Route 66 in the 60's, like the "World's Largest Ball of Yarn", or  the "World's Longest Hotdog" - just something cheesey and from another time, but you just had to stop and see it. 

It turns out, only a few days after we left, this is where Sarah Palin gave her rambling, incoherant, "I'm quitting - but I'm not quitting" speech.

After leaving Pioneer Park, we drove around the city quite a bit, even re-tracing parts our trail a couple of times.  It's a pretty small city.We also found and drove through U of Alaska - Fairbanks.  Let's just say it's not as picturesque as Auburn or Syracuse.  Once we went through campus, we felt like we'd seen about as much of Fairbanks as anyone could expect in one day (and probably pretty much all there is to see, although if I remember correctly there was a museum or 2 I would have liked to see downtown if we'd had more time).  So, we started heading out.

Now, on the way up to Fairbanks this morning, we debated on which route back to Anchorage we should take.  We could take state road 2, which makes a gentle arc toward the Southeast and then around to Anchorage.  The benefit of this was that is was another new road - more of Alaska that we'd get to see.  The negative was that we had to have the R/V back by 1pm, or something like that, and we weren't sure how long it would take to drive that distance or if there would be detours.  We decided to take a chance on the new route, and it was a great decision.

Not far outside of Fairbanks we ran into the town of North Pole, Alaska (no joke!).  Well, we had to at least pull of and drive through town. It's by far the biggest town we drove through in the interior, other than Fairbanks of course.  The entire town is decked out like Christmas - but all throughout the year.  Sign poles (even for McDonald's) and lamp posts are striped like candy canes.  Streets are named after Christmas things. 

Then we found this Christmas mega-store, called Santa Claus House.  Outside they have some reindeer in a pen and this huge Santa Claus sign(that's Sarah and I down by his feet).

This place is amazing!  They have every Christmas thing you can imagine. And it is HUGE!  We were there late in the afternoonand fortunately there was hardly anyone there.  We love it and had a lot of fun.  We were there until they closed. 

When kids write letters to Santa this is where they come, and teams of volunteers all write back.

Which of these 2 mammals is hairier? 

It was about 5pm when we left North Pole, and we started heading south-southeast on state road 2.  It was a pretty drive, and after some time, stopped on the side of a mountain overlooking an unbelievably wide valley composed entirely of a very wide and shallow river bed.  Actually, hundreds of anastomozing river channels all criss-crossing each other, with forested islands between them.  It was a really beautiful spot.  It was really nice because Ed & Jeanette cooked dinner while I sat outside taking in the beautiful seen and reflecting on the whole amazing trip, and dreading going back to work and the "lower 48".  Alaska is an amazing place.  I'd love to live here some day. 

We didn't really want to drive at night and miss the scenery, but we needed to get some more miles behind us to make the R/V deadline tomorrow.  This road really parallels the Alaska pipeline, because we saw it many times near the road.  I drove as long as I could, and finally got too tired.  We fund a very nice state park campground and pulled off.  I don't remember what the name of the park was, but there were so many along this road.  It was very dark and very quiet, with only 1 other camper in the park, and we were soon asleep.  It had been a very long, but eventful day.