August 28, 2018

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Aug 28

Did we mention it rains here 80% of the time? The 2-hour drive to Fairbanks was a bit boring, not the same spectacular views we’ve been seeing.

But the weather cleared just in time for our sternwheeler cruise on the Chena River. Well worth it. There are many homes along the river, some are poor and run down, most are large homes, many quite opulent.

The most interesting part of the cruise was meeting David Monson, husband of the legendary late Suzan Butcher, 4-time winner of the Iditarod 1000-mile Alaska dogsled race with equally famous lead dog Granite. David demonstrated to us on the ship, from shore, how the dogs are trained and how they are anxious to work pulling an ATV for what looked like maybe 2 km. We later got a photo of him signing his book for us.

Along the way, we disembarked to visit a model Athabascan native village with interpretation by two native college students. Very interesting indeed.
Ferdy also struck up a conversation with Catriona Rowntree, the Australian travel show hostess we first met on the Star Princess. She was here filming the sternwheeler cruise with many staff, including some motorboat accompaniment. She allowed me to take a nice portrait of her.

After checking in to our Moose Tracks B&B in North Pole, we decided to visit the Santa’s House in town. Their Santa statue is very large, but we wished they had not put a fence around it. As for the store, well the ladies liked what is certainly the largest Christmas store we’ve ever seen.

Bennie’s Pagoda restaurant (Chinese) serves about 2-3 times the food needed, doggie bag for dinner tomorrow......

The northern lights were supposed to have started over these past few days and North Pole is one of the best places to view them around here. Alas! No moose here either.

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