Yes Virginia; there is a Santa Claus – and he’s at the North Pole, Alaska

Thursday, June 18, 2009 – Day 49

We departed Denali National Park around 10:07 this morning under cloudy skies.  There was a very light drizzle and the temperature was about 12C.  The drizzle/showers continued for a good portion of our route north along the Parks Highway, Route #3 and it didn’t start to clear until we got close to Fairbanks. The scenery was once again spectacular.  We passed through a couple of areas that were boggy and mosquito infested but were fortunate enough to get some ammunition for our “Spot the Moose” feature.   

 

 

In Alaska, there are wild iris’s that are in bloom right now, and they occur in these boggy areas. They are in a word, beautiful (and when I can figure out how to correctly use the camera’s macro settings, I’ll get some decent pictures of them.) We arrived in Fairbanks just after 1:30 and found our chosen campground.  The Riverview RV Park is located along the Chena River just south east of the city of Fairbanks approximately 8 miles from the downtown area.  It is well treed area with easy drive through sites.  A really beautiful campground with super hosts.

Once we got settled we went into Fairbanks to check out the Alaska Public Lands Information Center (APLIC).  There are a number of these Centers across Alaska and had we known how informative they were, we would have stopped at more.  We arrived in time to see a film about the Exxon Valdez oil spill,  This was a documentary film taken shortly after the spill in 1989.  Seems that “America’s Biggest Oil Spill” was in the news back then but it somehow doesn’t have the same impact until you see the rich ecological area that it affected.  Apparently there is still oil under many of the rocks and much of the beach sand in Prince William Sound and many of the animal species are just now starting to rebound.  We were able to get some information and some first hand knowledge about  the Dalton Highway, which leads to the Arctic Circle.  This is the original road built up to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean, which was at that time called the “Haul Road”, due to the fact that only semi trucks used it to haul goods in order to support the building of the Alaska pipeline.  It is still mostly gravel and still primarily used by the semi’s and as long as one follows the special rules of the road one should be okay.  We find out tomorrow as we head north up the Haul Road.

We also visited the North Pole today.  Yes Virginia, there is a North Pole and it is located in Alaska, just south east of Fairbanks. We went to the City Hall and it was about the only building that was not decked out in North Pole paint or finery.  Almost everything here has a Christmas theme. (Even one of the police cars had lettering with snow on it.  We were taking pictures of each other at the North Pole sign when a guy pulls up and asks if we would like our pictures taken together. We said, “Sure if that’s not a problem?!”  He replied, “That’s just one of my jobs as mayor of North Pole!”  To which I replied, “I was expecting someone with a white beard and a red suit.”  Doug Isaacson, had a neatly trimmed beard and moustache and a Hawaiian shirt.  He told us where to find the Santa House and he was driving back to work again (this was at 6:00 PM.)

So off to Santa Claus House we went.  WOW.  (I had only used that word to describe the scenery, so far.)  This place is everything Christmas.  Ornaments, baubles, lights…just about anything you could imagine. And of course Santa was there talking to the guests and listening to some of the kids who already had Christmas wishes.  I’m a Christmas-nut anyway so I was in seventh-heaven.  I had a smile on my face the whole time I was there.  Right next door is the Santa land RV Park, also with the Christmas theme.

As I write this it is almost midnight, but looking outside it seems like dusk.  Not daytime but definitely not night.  These days with close to 22 hours of daylight certainly mess-up your sleep/wake cycles.  Got to get to bed now.