ALASKA TRIP 2024: DAY 2: FAIRBANKS DAY 1

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Manoli had heard that last night you could possibly see the Northern Lights, if it was clear enough, so she stayed up late to see. Unfortunately it wasn't clear enough. We planned on taking a bus to see the Wildlife place and then go downtown, but, unfortunately, the busses didn't run on Saturday or Sunday. I wish I had realized that, cause I would have tried to rent a car from Avis/Budget, for Saturday through maybe Monday or Tuesday. Instead, we decided to walk as far as we could, and see as much as we could.

Manoli woke me up about 9am, we got dressed and headed out. The main drag, College Road, that the hostel was very close to is the one with the wildlife center, among other things. We headed towards downtown, and very soon saw they had a Farmers Market set up just a ways down the street, on the other side, so we headed there. They had a lot of booths set up, selling all sorts of stuff from artwork to clothing to foodstuffs. We wandered around a bit, and then headed back to the road. A mile or so further down, we came to Creamers Field. They weren't open, but the wildlife trail/center was just next door. We were sort of surprised to see so many people there, but found out later that today was National Cleanup Day. There was a group of older folks walking the short trail, and quite a few families with little kids, walking through the grass to pickup up any sort of trash. It was pretty cool. They also had a fairly dried up pond, that had a good many geese and ducks.

After taking a couple of photos, we walked back to the road and continued our way to downtown Fairbanks, just a couple miles further down the road. In just a short ways, we went from countryside to cityside. There was a really cool plaza that had a neat statue of an Eskimo family, with a lot of history engraved on the stones surrounding it. About a block further down, I spotted a sign for a crepery called.... The Crepery. Since it was about lunchtime, we decided to stop there. Although it was about 50 some degrees outside, and there were tables inside, we both decided to eat outside. We both ordered a savory crepe, and I ordered a capuccino. The crepes were delicious, and the capuccino wasn't too bad. After lunch, which I barely finished, we walked down the street a little ways to the Fairbanks Ice Museum. It was in a old theater, and when we entered, they told us the fee was $18 each, so we said we'd think about it and we back outside. Just down the street a bit was what looked like a nice souvenir shop, so we went inside and looked around. I think Manoli saw a few things she liked, but didn't buy anything but I bought a thimble of Fairbanks. When we went back outside, we both looked at each other and said "let's go back to the Ice Museum".

We walked back down the street to the building, paid the $18 each, and went inside. It wasn't that big a place, but they had some awesome ice sculptures. The first one I saw was a slide, running down the side to the back corner. When I saw a couple older men doing it, of course I had to do it. Manoli passed and I grabbed a sled and headed up to the top. It wasn't that steep or long, and I didn't go fast at first, but by the bottom I was flying. They had a long carpet at the end and I just trusted it would slow me down. It did, but I was close to the end of the building when it stopped. We wandered through the maze of sculptures, mostly of bears and moose and reindeer. Every few sculptures had a carpet on the back of the animals, so you could sit on it and take a photo. They even had one with 5 or 6 reindeer pulling a sleigh! As we were heading out, Manoli said she wanted to do the slide, so we went back to it and she wooshed down it. I think she enjoyed it. As we left, they had a souvenir shop, but there was nothing that interesting and small enough that we wanted to buy.

Before we left downtown, we decided to find the Transit building for the MAC bus. After wandering around a bit, we found it. It was closed, as I mentioned earlier, but now we knew where it was, and could use it as a change spot for our trip to the North Pole, Monday. We decided to take a different route back to the hostel, and check out the Train Depot that we would be using Tuesday morning, for our trip to Anchorage, via Denali. After a rather grueling walk, of over 5 miles, we finally made it to the hostel, with a stop for some dinner at the Circle K down the street a ways. I tried to stay up for a while, but after the long walk, I fell asleep. I'm not sure if Manoli stayed awake to, just in case the night was clear enough to see the Northern Lights.

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Photos

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Manoli walking across College Rd.

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Inside the Farmers Market.

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The Farmers Market from across the street.

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A group of older folks looking for wildlife.

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The sign for the wildlife refuge.

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An interesting spot of the side of the street. I think for the auto museum.

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The lowest speed limit I've ever seen.. 2 1/2 mph!

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An interesting old church near the beginning of downtown.

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View of the plaza from the bridge.

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The plaza with its statue and a cool clock.

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The Eskimo statue.

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The Crepery where we ate lunch.

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Our lunch at the Crepery.

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Manoli sitting in a Moose sleigh at the Ice Museum.

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A picture of a portion of the ice sculptures.

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An icy Thank You sign.

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A photo of part of downtown Fairbanks.

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The bridge of flags.