June 18th

THE DETAILS:

THE WEATHER: It started out cloudy today and 54. Gary was able to get his first TV station and watched the weather last night. It’s suppose to be showers today. But instead we ended up with partly sunny skies and a high of 72 degrees!

THE DISTANCE: We left the campground in the North Pole at noon! Yeah, you got that right, and only drove 15 miles to Fairbanks. We are currently staying at Riverview Campgrounds.


Well, it was a slow start today. I think the last time zone caught up to us. We were in bed for 10:00 pm and didn’t wake up until 8 am!! We put tin foil on the roof vent and that gave us the added darkness we needed. So now that we are refreshed we’ll hit the town of North Pole. It was interesting to drive around and the whole town gets into the festivities. The hardware store had 2 huge candy canes that supported their sign and a dental office called North Pole Dental, looked very Bavarian. There were stores called Polar Espresso and the Santa Claus House. We spent some time at the Santa Claus House because it is a Christmas shop. Gary sent his grandkids each a postcard that will be stamped from the North Pole! We did find our Christmas ornament.

From there we moved on to Fairbanks which we realized was only 15 miles away! Ha! Big miles today! Now we see signs like Mt. McKinley Bank, Klondike Korner, and Kodiak Jack‘s Saloon. We didn’t realize we were going to be here for the weekend of Summer Solstice! They celebrate the longest day of the year which is June 21st!! They close off 3 blocks and have a huge block party festival and we could even take in the 105th annual softball game played… you guessed it…. Under the midnight sun from 10pm till midnight! We were told about the University of Alaska’s amazing museum so we took the scooter out for a ride to check it out. Well, it was interesting but not as spectacular as everyone made it out to be. There was an interesting documentary about the Aurora Borealis. Of course I don’t know how much a small town like this can offer. I am really surprised that these “cities” you hear about ie; Fairbanks and Anchorage are really just big towns. I would say Fairbanks isn’t much bigger than Manchester’s west side. From the University we drove to Brewster’s for dinner where I once again got the halibut fingers. They are delicious. From there we went for a ride over to Pioneer Park where they have a walk through a Gold Rush Town, a narrow, winding street of authentic old buildings that once graced downtown Fairbanks. The houses now are set up to be used by local shops selling food and crafts. We got there after the shops were closed but could walk through the town and read about the houses. Gary was very interested in the structure, I was interested in the history of the building. We took a ride through town after that and got “home” around 10 pm. The picture that will be posted of the sun setting over a river is just a few steps out of our door and the sun setting is at 10:30 pm. As you can see it still has a way to go.

So we have settled down at our site in RV City once again. Summer has certainly begun up here. Everything is crowded. At least we were able to get a corner lot facing the river. Not bad!


PS: Tim: stop your wineing. Gerry & Gayle: it’s good to have you aboard, if you can find room you are welcome to stay but that webcam has GOT TO GO!! If you heard the conversation about ME actually catching all those fish yesterday it’s a lie!! Really! One more condition on you staying is: you cannot heckle the fishermen or women. BTW, when we run low on Bolivia’s Best, are you up to taking a trip out west?? Dan: TMI

June 17th

THE DETAILS:

WEATHER: Woke up to cloud cover and 54 degrees. Showers began shortly after 9:00 am. But it became partly cloudy for the rest of the day around noon time. The high today was around 75.


DISTANCE: We left Delta Junction at 10:00 am. And arrived in the North Pole around 8 pm. We only drove 94 miles today.



Well, Gary was right, the campground this morning came alive at 5 am. A little early but with how bright it was outside I had a hard time getting back to sleep. What’s interesting about it being light most of the day is not that it is bright most of the time - we expected that, but when the sun is still in the sky and just as it begins to set there is a still that comes over the campgrounds. You can hear a pin drop, there is little to no traffic on the road. It’s a weird feeling to see everything shut down and look kinda’ like a ghost town when it is as bright as 7:00 pm at home.

So we got on our way further west but not far! We were in pursuit of dinner…. A fish dinner. We stopped at one state park and they were charging $20.00 for 2 hours of a boat rental on a pond plus $10.00 for every hour after that. Gary refused to pay that kind of price, so we continued on down the road. We got to another state park and there were no boat rentals at all and the pond was difficult to access. We were getting ready to pull out of the parking lot and one of the rangers asked us what part of New Hampshire we were from. He was an older guy named Paul, but as sharp and strong as a 30 year old! It turns out that he is from East Portland and has been spending his summers up here for the past 8 to 9 years running different state parks. What an interesting guy! I told him we were looking for good fishing spots along the Richardson Highway and he said, “right here is good!” We told him we didn’t have a boat and he said, “I do”. So, “only because we were from New Hampshire“, he lent us his boat and we spent 4 hours fishing on the most beautiful, peaceful pond. (Steve & Cheryl…. It looked like 3rd lake in Pittsburg). And yes, we have more than 1 fish dinner, we have 2!! Gary caught 2 and I caught 2. There were 2 at 14 inches, 1 at 13 inches and 1 at 12. Steve,Gerry & Mark; they were all rainbows. They were a lot of fun to pull in and we were even able to give Paul one for dinner! It was a good day.

We got off the pond late in the afternoon and then Gary had to put the boat away with Paul, and clean the fish and then they had to swap stories from back home. By the time we got on our way we were turned away from the first campground so went to another and here we are in the North Pole! Yes, they actually have a town called the North Pole and all the street light poles are painted like candy canes. There’s Santa’s and Christmas shops everywhere. We will try to get our Christmas ornament from here tomorrow.

The moose were on the move today. We saw 2 of them, and Northway even lost their one week old ambulance to a collision with a moose last night. All along the road here there are these beautiful purple flowers that smell like hyacinth. We found out that they are called fire weed.

PS: Dan, sorry about taking letters A thru P to get here. Maybe we should try to make our return trip in 10 stops!! Ha! The way we’re going we may go through the alphabet twice. I think it’s time to find out what google maps can do for us. To answer your question, we are probably going to move most nights because we have to break camp every morning anyway just to get around so we might as well continue to move forward rather than come back to the same camp. It will be different when we reach a place we want to spend more time and get around with the scooter or do a bus tour, like Fairbanks, Anchorage and Denali State Park. We’ll see where the road takes us!