Reaching Fairbanks, Alaska

Day 15, Friday, August 7th

We got a good start from Tok for the final run into Fairbanks. Rain over night had dampened down some of the smoke so the road was more visible. It was still quite overcast. We saw a moose cow and calf along the Highway as we just got out of town. A few miles further Dick saw a guy jogging alongside the road, with a handgun tucked in the back of his pants. It makes sense that you could be jumped by a cougar or a bear. When you become a prey species, then you might need to fight back. We aren’t at home anymore! Later, we saw three more moose, including another cow and calf plus a younger female that hung out by the road, posing for photos for a long time! Driving along through dense forests with occasionally saw mountains on the right or left. We passed a number of really wide rivers with water running through the gravel and image what these would be like in the spring.

Today we crossed over The Black Veteran’s Memorial Bridge decided to the 3,695 black solders that worked on the Highway. This was over the Grestle River. The segregated army operated with the idea that black solders couldn’t be sent to, or entrusted with, any work that was complicated or highly skilled. Since many of the black soldiers came from the South, there was a lot of skepticism in sending them to Alaska, but everyone agreed that they more than held their own in doing their part of building the Highway. It is nice to see more and more recognition of their role in the informational materials that we are seeing throughout the drive and in the videos, books and museums. One of the most famous photos from the construction is one of a black and a white bulldozer operator shaking hands over the blades of their bulldozers at the movement when they finally completed the very last section of the Highway at Beaver Creek Yukon. Both were very surprised when they were already at the point of meeting the engineers working from the opposite direction.

We crossed the Alaskan Pipeline today. Where we saw it the pipeline looked like a miniature suspension bridge as it crossed a river. It runs something like 600 miles. How much oil it has to take just to fill the pipeline, let alone have some left over to actually go somewhere?

We continue to see lots of ravens alongside the road. We never really thought of Alaska, home to ravens, but we guess it is.

Arrived in Fairbanks. After more than a week in very small towns, it is somewhat of a relief to see some city lights. Fairbanks is a fairly large city, especially as cities in Alaska go, about 35,000 people.

We read about a really cool campground in our “Camping in Alaska” book, but found that it was closed when we got there. It was one near a river where float planes, those with pontoons, land on the water…within the city limits of Fairbanks! When that didn’t pan out (to get with the lingo of looking for gold), we found another interesting option. A local amusement park, Pioneer Park, allows people to park and camp in their huge parking lot overnight for $12. We decided to check it out, and found out that this also included $12 off on an all you can eat Salomon Bake (kind of an Alaskan luau), and an old-time review show at The Palace Theatre entitled Golden Heart Revue: A Comedy Revue About Life in the last Frontier. This show answers a few of the more common questions about Fairbanks such as: WHY would anyone want to build a town in the godforsaken swampland? How could that town survive for more than 100 years? How do people handle the cold? With that description, how could we pass it up? So that’s just what we did. Got our parking pass, saw some of the historical pioneer and cultural things at the Amusement park, including a wonderful exhibit of quilts made up of pieces created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alaska becoming a state. Then we ate ourselves silly on all-you-can-eat salmon, halibut, cod, chocolate cake, and salads at the Salmon Bake. After dinner we had a bonus in hearing most of a storytelling concert by Martin, a Fairbanks’s storyteller, who told some truly funny stories about an Alaskan character named Grizzly Pete. Here is a website that talks more about Pioneer Park http://alaskandreams.net/alaskaland/Index.html

And then we saw the comedy revue which was surprisingly funny, good music and highly clever. One of the funniest parts was a take-off on the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on first?” but this was done with talking about the names of dogs at the positions on a sled dog team (lead, swing, team, and wheel). The audience, including us, was howling by the time they were done. Great show!

After the show, we watched most of the people get back on their shuttle or tour buses, while we walked back to our van sitting in a now nearly empty huge parking lot. We were not far from a row of park buses, soon augmented by the buses used to ferry the patrons of the evening shows back to their hotels. It was 10:00 and the sun was just going down above the overcast skies. We are learning to slow down, even if it is not yet dark. We cranked up the park’s free wi-fi and worked on our blog before going to sleep in the back of the mini-van. How funny is it all!