Golden Heart City









































We’ve been in Fairbanks for two weeks now, how did that happen.  After the journey, we hung around the rig for a few days and unwound.  We are all settled in at the park and officially started working.  We have a good crew and one more couple arrived yesterday.  One morning last week, several of us were woken up by a howling pack of wolves.  That was quite the Alaskan experience.  


The weather has been pretty good, it almost hit 70* one day and we’ve been out on the bike path to North Pole.  One day we had a brief blizzard and the snow stuck around for 24 hours.  We’ve done a bit of exploring around town, but not too much yet.  Last Wednesday we took a ride down to Denali while we could still drive into the park.  The park is so big, it would be amazing to drive the 90 miles to the end of the road, but we had to stop at mile 30.  Mile 30 is the Tek campground and we are going to try to snag some reservations in there this summer.  


On our drive we saw unlimited Ptarmigan.  Chicken Alaska is called Chicken, because people couldn’t properly spell Ptarmigan.  We saw quite a few prairie dogs, a few caribou and Katy spotted a big bull moose in a pond.  The mountain range was wide open when we left Fairbanks.  When we got to the park, Denali was surrounded by clouds but you could see the top.  After some time in the park she developed a hat, but the size of the mountain is amazing.  We’ve seen numerous 14ers and a few more that may edge that, but 20,300’ is a whole new level.  We parked at an overlook for about twenty minutes and used binoculars to watch the quickly changing clouds.  I’ve heard only a 1/3 of visitors to Alaska actually get to see Denali.  We’ll be back!  


Despite the great KP index, we’ve struck out on the aurora.  It stays light too long.  A sign in Denali said, “check back in September.”  The mosquitoes are getting thick and I noticed the smaller, fast ones are

hatching.  Time to see if the natural Florida sprays work.  We also picked up a Thermacell for around the picnic table.  


We took an afternoon to assist at the Fairbanks Community Food bank.  After our orientation, we helped with sorting produce for food boxes.  They are doing amazing work in central and north Alaska.  They send food all over the state, not just Fairbanks.  Some of it is loaded onto small planes and sent to remote villages.  We’re definitely going back there to help out.  


Yesterday was a regroup day, Walmart, Costco, etc.   We did check out the Wednesday Tanana Valley Farmers Market.  There was a lot of cool stuff to see, lots of breads and pastries.  It looks like there is room to expand as the season goes on.  We also visited the Alaska Range overlook on the UAF Campus.  It was a clear beautiful day and all the mountains, including Denali were out.  This is worth a stop on a nice day.  With binoculars, we could see the mountains all the way down by Palmer.  On another note, everything was gray and brown when we got here.  Now the grass is green and the trees have leaves…in just two weeks.  


I’ve probably missed something, more to follow.


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