Fairbanks, AK

June 21, 2007

Left Cantwell around 9am, another wonderful day cool and clear. It got rather hot the last couple of days in the RV and we went to turn the AC on but it didn’t work. I guess all this bumping has loosened a wire or something. We will go to someplace in Fairbanks to have it fixed. Thank goodness we have insurance coverage, I am sure it will not be cheap to fix!!!

We realized that this is a big holiday weekend up here, today is the summer solstice and they do a lot of celebrating. I was telling Doug that I hoped they didn’t have fireworks at the campground and then remembered they don’t do fireworks, it is too light out!!! I just love learning about the different environments. We get so used to our own that we forget the differences. One thing is the same though, fire. They are having some serious fires in the area where we camped over Memorial Day. There have already been several thousand acres burned.

June 22, 2007

Today we went to the University of Alaska. They have a wonderful research department and have musk ox, caribou and reindeer. The tour guide was a graduate student and was really informative. I always get confused about the difference between caribou and reindeer, so thought I should write it down so I remember. Reindeer are domesticated caribou. They have been domesticated for hundreds of years, and as a result are smaller that what we call caribou. That is basically the only difference.

We had gone to the musk ox farm in Palmer, but learned a lot more about them today.

The weather is turning cold again. It started out to be a warm day so I wore shorts. I told Doug that is the last time I leave the house in shorts while we are in Alaska!!! I was so cold by the time we got back I was shaking!!! I am wondering why we need to fix the AC!!!!

Doug put towels up on our bedroom windows because it is too light for him!!!

June 23, 2007

Believe it or not we spent the whole day shopping!!! We started off to Wal-Mart to pick up some prescriptions and Doug saw a garage sale!!!! One thing led to another and we ended up doing thrift stores and Army Navy surplus!!! The one good thing we did find was a large fishnet we wanted to decorate our back patio whenever Doug gets around to finishing it!!!! He had picked up a book on how to make fishnet and a few days later we found just what we needed. Of course we got a lot of things we could have done without!!! We actually had to stop as the car was full!!!

Went for a short ride and saw a few things we want to go back to.

June 24, 2007

Went to a little community church and met some really nice people. We might get together with one of the families before we leave Fairbanks. Their daughter and son-in-law were the speakers today. They are going to the Philippines as aviation missionaries.

Went for a great ride out in the country. Had some wonderful scenery and drove on both paved and dirt roads. We had been told about an area that is good for panning, so we went there and spoke with a few people that were panning. We will go back sometime this week.

There is an area that you can get right up to the pipeline, of course we had to do that!!! Doug had to touch it!!! I have hear talk about the noise that the oil makes going through the line and the affect it has on the wildlife. I tried to hear the noise and was not able to hear anything. I even touched the pipe and could not even feel a vibration. It was very interesting to hear about the ‘pigs’ they send through the line to keep it clean and the oil flowing easily. My favorite part of this trip has been the information we get regarding the areas we are visiting.

I have sent all the pictures I have taken so far to my “publisher”. He is going to do a DVD of our trip (not sure if I have mentioned this before). He informed me that I sent him over 1,000 pictures!! This should give you and idea of how hard it is for me to select the pictures to put on the blog. By the way, my “publisher” is Nickdanger Productions, my very talented grandson!!! He is going to make a DVD of our trip for us so we can bore all of our friends!!!

We stopped at a little grocery store out in the middle of nothing because we heard they had information on panning. When we got out of the car we were greeted by a very loud and aggressive goose!!! All I could think of was Edie, our daughter. I eluded to this before and guess I should share the story. When she was about 4 years old we stopped at a pond and encouraged her to feed the black swans. She held out a piece of bread and the swan tried to take her hand!!! Recently when she was at a girl scout weekend they were all sitting near a pond just talking and a duck ran up and bit her, then ran away!!!! Needless to say, she does not have a fondness for birds!!!! So, when this goose was so aggressive I just had to la