Advertisement
20240513_092456
McCaffertys Coffehouse.I got a very good night's sleep, but I think Manoli got up at 4am. I guess its due to her habit of getting up at 6 or 7 in the morning back home. We checked the bus schedule, had a cup of coffee, and headed out the door. Today we're going to the North Pole.... Alaska, but by bus instead of walking, which is a good thing since the town is like 50 miles from Fairbanks.
We got to the bus stop about 10 minutes early, and waited. Soon enough, along came the bus. We'd already found out that as seniors, we could ride the bus for free! Fairbanks uses a series of colors for the bus lines, Orange, Green, Red, Purple, Gery, and Blue. We were taking the Green line to downtown at the bus depot, then changing over to the Purple line. When we arrived, we were a bit early, since the bus to the North Pole takes an hour to get there and we were about 40 minutes too late, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the bus to get back.
We decided to wander around that part of town a bit, and
20240513_094436
The unusual sign saying violators will be peed on. quickly found a decent looking coffee house called McCaffertys. Manoli ordered a small coffee with cream and I ordered the usual, a medium size cappuccino with some caramel added. Mine was pretty good, although a bit strong, but Manoli needed some more cream. We took our coffees and wandered around a bit before returning to the bus depot. Near the plaza where we were Sunday, we spotted an unusual sign that said "DOG SLED PARKING" and "VIOLATORS WILL BE PEED ON". That was so funny! We returned to the bus depot about 10 minutes early, then boarded the bus to the North Pole.
As I mentioned, the ride was about an hour long, but there was some nice scenery along the way. As we entered the town, we quickly noted the names of places were the North Pole High School or the North Pole Library, etc. I guess that is to be expected. The town wasn't that big, but they had some decent stores and restaurants. We looped around the town, stopping in several other places before stopping at the Santa Claus House. The building was pretty large with a lot of parking, a neat Christmas tree and of
20240513_112455
North Pole High School course a statue of Santa Claus. I read that this was the largest statue of Santa Claus in the world. It was pretty big!
We walked inside and were astonished by the amount of Christmas decorations and other Christmas stuff they had. They have a desk where you can get a letter from Santa Claus sent to someone, or even a deed to a 1 square inch piece of land at the North Pole. I assumed they meant the town in Alaska, not the real North Pole. I was tempted, but Manoli just wanted to send postcards to each of our girls. We bought a variety of 5 cards, each different, and after we put the addresses on them, and wrote a brief message, we stamped them as being from the North Pole, and the lady put them in a basket to go to the post office. I looked for a thimble as usual, but they didn't have anything but one that just said Alaska, in small print. I did spot a cute mug that had a bear with text saying "Papa Bear", so I couldn't resist. In case you don't know, all of our kids are nicknamed with
20240513_112841
North Pole Library "bear", such as Tanyabear, Serenabear, and Monicabear, and our grandsons carried on the tradition, so I'm called Papabear and my wife is Chatabear.
By the time we finished shopping, it was almost 12:30pm and our bus was coming back by at 1:05pm, so we walked down the street a bit to a Wendy's and bought some lunch to go. We pretty much finished it by the time the bus came. The ride back was a little shorter, since we picked it up at the end of the North Pole route. Back in Fairbanks, we decided to take the same route as we would to get back to the hostel, but in reverse so we could stop at Fred Myers again. We had about a 15 minute wait, then hopped on the bus. We arrived at Fred Myers, did a walk-thru the food department, oh, and I grabbed a new mouse since I'd lost my USB adapter. We ended up buying some seafood pasta, pina colada dessert, and Manoli got some fruit.
We went back outside, to the same stop that had dropped us off, and took the bus that came in about 10 minutes, to return to the
20240513_113325
North Pole Middle School hostel. Along the way, we stopped at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, for the driver to take a break. We arrived back at the hostel and chilled. Tomorrow we catch the train to Anchorage that leaves at 8:20am, and arrives at 8pm. It makes a few stops along the way, such as Denali, so I'm sure it won't seem to take that long.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0194s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
