We got back from the Arctic Circle before dark which isn’t saying much as it doesn’t get dark here in Fairbanks until about 11:00 pm., and that’s not really dark. It was still light enough to take pictures at that time.
This next day we boarded a bus at the campground that took us to a sternwheeler (Riverboat Discovery) on the Chena River. It’s rated the #1 boat tour in North America. We took a guided walking tour of the Chena Indian Village from the boat. We saw Susan Butcher’s Iditarod champion sled dogs in action. We viewed a bush pilot demonstrating his ability to take off and land in very short distances (no runway). We returned to the campground around 1:00. They fed us free fresh baked donuts and coffee on the boat. A very enjoyable day in Fairbanks, the town we liked the best.
The next day we went to the gift shop and museum at the University of Alaska. There I saw some high-class carvings by an Athabaskan Eskimo, Leonard Savage, who was from Holy Cross, Alaska. The one I liked the best was of a musher, and his five dogs, and a sled, that was carved from one piece of walrus tusk. Well, I bought that as a souvenir from the trip. I thought I was justified for all the miles I had driven. A very enjoyable gift shop.
I didn’t want to start home. I could have stayed there much longer. All good things must come to an end. We came to the town of North Pole, just outside of Fairbanks, on the Alaska Highway where Santa Claus lives. When we got there, we were informed that Santa and his elves were out to lunch. We looked around in his house and I spied his red toboggan and an empty chair. I sat in his chair and donned his toboggan and Kay took my photo substituting for Santa. When I left Virginia, I didn’t know I would have to pinch-hit for Santa Claus.
We were feeling hungry by this time, so we stopped at a Pizza Hut. We ordered our pizza and were eating it when a middle-aged lady sat down beside us and started talking. We told her we were from Virginia and were headed home. She seemed intrigued that we were there all the way from Virginia. She said they were closing and that we could have all the pizza that they had left over. We walked out with eight pizzas. We had pizza most of the way home.
We backtracked most of the way down the Alaska Highway to Fort St. John, B C. There we got on Rt. 29 to Chetwynd, B. C., the town with all the wood carvings. There were chain-sawed wood carvings throughout the whole town. At this place is where we headed south toward Vancouver, BC
I stopped several places along the Alaska Highway to buy some tree burls to turn some bowls out of when I got home. My favorite type of souvenir.
Our next sizable town was Williams Lake. We camped at a place called Clinton which was a nice campground but small on Rt. 97. Rt. 97 turns into Rt.1. We stayed on this route until we got to Hope, BC. It was on this route that we witness an odd phenomenon. It looks and feels like you are traveling downhill but you are actually going uphill. We witnessed this once before on one of our trips west. We couldn’t understand why we were slowing down, was there something mechanically wrong? We finally realized we were going uphill; it only took another gear. We crossed into the USA at Abbotsford on Rt. 539 to Bellingham, Washington. I saw my first blueberry picking machine here.
We boarded a ferry here over to Port Townsend. We stopped to eat at a restaurant at Port Angeles, Washington. From here we got on Rt. 101 over to the Olympic National Park and Olympic Rainforest in the extreme northwest corner of Washington. We found out there are no roads going through the park.
(An odd thought entered my mind) We got the whole width of the USA to go yet to get home.
To be continued. Check with us next month for a continuation of this adventure…John
