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.

Alaska Trip - Day 8 (August 23, 2009)

Yes, I know how long it's been.  We've been so busy.  Too busy.  I'll just pick up where  left off and try to catch up over the next week or so since I have some time off.

Don't forget about Sarah's book, which you can pre-order (for a significant discount) here: http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Down-High-Blood-Pressure/dp/1590771591/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261620016&sr=8-1

Also don't forget that this new version of blogger still doesn't allow me to upload video, so be sure tocome back later to these last serval posts once I'm able to upload them.

Today the weather continued to be kind of crappy - misty/drizzly with low hanging overcast skies.  Ed and Jeanette wanted to go White Water Rafting, and we did too, but it wasn't a good idea with Sarah being knocked up and all.  So, we dropped them off at the rfting company headquarters, then went back to the Denali NP "village", where they have a general store, showers, etc.  We each took much needed showers, and felt much better afterwards. 

Then we went back into town to check out the sites.  There were a lot of nice littel stores with unique things, but unfortunately, most of the stores were tourist traps filled with the exact same tainted "Made in China" crap as almost every other store on the strip.  The nice stores were a bit expensive, and we only splurged on a nice glass bowl. 

Sarah was shopping too long.

There were also some cool-looking places to eat in town, and Ed and I sampled some sausages - reindeer and something else, like musk ox or moose, or something.  Doesn't really matter - they were both good.

Ed and Jeanette had a great time rafting, but said they were freezing. 

On the way back into the park this afternoon we stopped at the other very nice park entrance sign to take pictures, and then saw thise cow moose fairly close to the road. 

Once we got back to camp, there was still plenty of daylight left, so we drove on the park road as far as you could go, which is only a couple miles farther in beyond our campsite.  We walked around there for a short while, and again around our camp site, but the weather was dreary, cold, and we were getting close to dinner time.  While we were walking we made a decision about the rest of the trip.  As much as we hated leaving the beautiful park after only seeing such a small part of it, we decided we'd get a lot more out of our trip if we drove the next day to Fairbanks, a few hours farther North in the Alaskan interior, than if we spent another day in dreary & wet conditions here in Denali, and that is what the weather was supposed to be like. 

I don't really remember this, but apparently we had a ramen noodle eating contest for dinner.  Looks like Jeanette won. 

Day 7 - Friday, August 21, 2009

We were up very early on Friday morning to catch the 1st flight off the island.  Josh came and picked us up and dropped us off at the airport.  The plane was delayed taking off, but soon we were off and flying over and away from the island for the last time. 

It's only about an hour to/from Anchorage, and before long we had landed, collected our bags, and were on a shuttle van to the RV rental place.  Once we took care of the paperwork, we loaded the RV, familiarized ouresleves with everything, and then we were off . . . to WalMart and Pizza Hut.  We needed to stock up on food supplies and Jeanette wanted lunch.  Jeanette loves Pizza Hut, but I think it is completely sucktastic (no offense Jeanette). 

Soon we were pulling away from Anchorage, heading north toward Denali National Park.  The first hour or so of the trip was disapointingly normal.  There were beautiful mountains and things, but we drove through several small towns that looked a lot like just about any other town you drive through, with the same fast food and strip malls .  Unfortunately, we had to drive through Wasilla - a town permanetly tainted with the stench of the former defeated vice-presidential candidate whose name is not worthy of appearing on our blog.  If given ANY choice at all, I would have driven around this city, even if it had added hours to the trip, just to avoid this town.  But, there was no choice, so I had to be satisfied to refuse to spend a cent in this town. 

After the first hour or so we were finally out in mostly wilderness on a 2 lane highway.  Unfortunately, it was still a little dull - there just wasn't much to see - the topography was pretty flat and there were dense aspen forests up to the road's edge.  At clearings in the road we started to see the top of an enormous mountain.  We quickly realized it was Mt. McKinley, or Denali!  That was pretty impressive because we were still 100 miles and a couple hours away.  We had been told that on perfectly clear days Denali can be seen in Anchorage (150 miles away).  Our incredible luck with the weather has lasted even through today.

I was driving fairly slowly to enjoy the scenery and to get used to driving this behaemoth vehicle.  I was glad I did, because at 1 point, out of the middle of nowhere, this enormous cow (female) moose ran out right in front of us.  I slammed on the breaks and didn't miss it by far.  That was the closest I've ever some to hitting anything bigger than a squirrel.  You don't realize how enormous moose are until you're up close to one.  It was also lucky that no one was standing up in the RV at the time or they would have flown out the windsheild and hit the moose. 

A little farther on and the scenery got much better.  It became hilly, and then we were in some spectacular mountains.  The dense aspen forests gave way to open spruce forests and sometimes tunra.  There were also some man-made scenery.  We drove by this wierd site and just had to stop, turn around, and investigate.  We found out later that it was built years ago as a hotel, but it never met code, so never opened.

Before getting to Denali, the road skirts the edge of Denali State Park, which looks beautiful, and then the southeastern boundary of Denali National Park.  The park is enormous, so you're actually driving parallel to but across the Talkeetna River from the border for quite a while before you actually make a left turn into the park.   We had to stop to get our customary picture at the entrance to the park, and the kept driving west deeper into the park. 

This is the Talkeetna River, the one that you drive along for awhile adjacent to Denali National Park.        Left of the river is the park. 

Jeannette - The Intimidator

We didn't stop by any of the main park buildings because we they had already closed.  There was almost no one else on the road, and by now it was starting to get dark since we were arriving pretty late.  We did see a couple of moose from the road and stoped to take a better look and try to take sme pictures.  If we had known how many moose we would see during the next few days, and how much closer they'd be, we would have just kept driving, but the 1st sighting is always exciting!

Tundra in the eastern part of the park on our way toward our campsite.

More tundra and spruce forest.

Denali at sunset.

We got to our camp ground and I was happy to see that it wasn't very full.  There weren't many RV sites to choose from, but there were lots of tent sites open, so the place didn't feel too crowded.  We circled around once, and the very nice campground host stopped us and told us that we were too late to check in like we were supposed to, but she'd let us stay for the night and we would get properly checked in the next morning.  Man, that's my dream retirment job.  You get to camp in some of the world's most beautiful places all summer long.  She told us that they were expecting a good Northern Lights show that night at about 2am.  None of us had ever seen the Northern Lights, so we were pretty excited about that.  I don't remember what we had for dinner, but I do know that we got there past the time you're allowed to run your generator, so it couldn't have been much. 

The camping area was beautiful and unlike anything I'd been in before.  It was a patch of open spruce forest a couple hundred yards in diameter surrounded by tundra on hilsides.  Perfect moose habitat, as we'd find later!

Sarah and I had the bed at the back of the RV, and Ed & Jeanette had the bunk over the drivers seat.  I kept looking out the back window for signs of an early showing of the northern light, but didn't see any.  We set our alarm clocks to make sure we'd wake up at 2, but when I did it was overcast, so we just went back to sleep.  I didn't want to wait outside because it was pretty cold!

It has been an incredible day and we just can't get over our luck with the weather.  We found out later that there are only a handful of days during the summer (really the year) that it is clear enough to see all of Denali like we could today.  The mountain is incredible, humbling, and awe inspring, and we never really got that close to it.

Off to Alaska!

Sarah is in Birmingham now dropping off Jackson with Granny Schein (a.k.a., Mumzie), and then tonight we're driving to our friend's house in Long Island, and then tomorrow morning we're leaving with them to go to Alaska! We'll be back on the 27th. We probably won't be able to post anything about that trip until we get back, but I've set up a couple of posts to be published while we're gone. Both are pretty interesting, I think anyway, so keep checking back!




Here's our basic itinerary: We're going to spend almost a week in Kodiak visiting Josh, and then we're flying back to Anchorage, renting an RV and driving to Denali National Park (http://www.nps.gov/dena/) for a few days. If we're lucky we may get to visit Katmai National Park (http://www.nps.gov/katm/)while we're in Kodiak, so we'll get 2 more parks on our list. We can't wait - fishing, hiking, nature, cool weather . . .

Mount McKinley (Denali), the highest mountain in North America - 20,320 ft.