Following our funky stop in Chicken, AK, we proceeded to North Pole, AK – “where the spirit of Christmas lives year round.” We chose not to get hooked on the kitsch, but rather focused on the more esoteric businesses. The founders hoped to attract toy manufacturers who could advertise products as being made in North Pole. That hasn’t worked out too well for them.
North Pole is just outside of Fairbanks, so it provided all the services we were in need of, but we spent more time than we would have liked getting the truck serviced, provisioning at Costco and doing laundry.
Some of the highlights of the stop were the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, which was very impressive. We loved seeing Otto the grizzly bear, who stands 8’ 9”, weighed 1250 pounds and is listed in the Boone & Crockett All Time Record book.
Vernon celebrated his birthday while we were here and we went to Cheena Hot Springs and, since we were both craving seafood, went to what was billed as the best seafood restaurant in town. The hot springs were meh compared to the Liard Hot Springs I mentioned a few postings ago and it started to rain the minute we got into the water. Oh, well! It’s been that sort of trip.
We visited with a friend from Long Island who lives here and works on the Air Force base. He took us for a tour of the base and had a nice visit with him and his family.
After North Pole (Fairbanks) we went to Denali National Park hoping to see the big kahuna, but she was was enshrouded in clouds for the 3 days we were there. The park is amazing. It is over 6 million acres – about the size of all of New England – with one road that is less than 100 miles long. Most of the road is closed due to a landslide. Funny story….the park put together an engineering plan and put it out to bid, but due to the remoteness of the area and the complexity of the project, nobody responded to the RFP. So no telling how long it will be closed. There are also no hiking trails past mile 42 on the road. It is TOTAL wilderness hiking. To say the least, the visit humbled us in that it makes one realize what a speck they are in the overall vastness of such a place.
We saw grizzly bears, momma moose with yearling calf, caribou, Dall sheep and some of the most expansive scenery we’ve ever seen. It dwarfs big sky Montana scenery.
We left Denali on August 9 in a SNOWSTORM!!!
I think it must have snowed about 3-5 inches before we dropped low enough in altitude to get out of it. We’ve seen snow in July in the Canadian Rockies, but it was just fleeting. This was a real snowstorm!
Tomorrow we fly out of Anchorage to Port Alsworth and then take a float plane to Twin Lakes and hike in to Dick Proenneke’s cabin. Dick was a fascinating character and a distant cousin of Vernon’s on the Iowa side of the family. I’ll write more about Dick and his cabin in the next blog posting.
Finally caught up with your posts. You guys look great and very happy. The scenery is amazing! It must feel wonderful to be there. You are definitely braver than I am. Maybe you can use the Amazon drone delivery service? I will tell Susan about the old films, she will want to investigate those. The curved bridge was interesting but who would want to bomb a bridge in the middle of nowhere? Susan would also tell you to drop the quaint old radios and get a sattilite phone!
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