Fairbanks

Ok, well, I have to admit, after a pretty good trip so far, we’re finding Fairbanks to be something of a disappointment.  Doesn’t help that it has rained all day, which makes it a little harder to do a couple of the things we had planned.  Now, I’m sure Fairbanks isn’t arguing with the rain, because they’ve had issues with fires in the areas around town, but hard to do much outdoor stuff when it’s a cold drizzle coming down.

In the morning as part of the tour package we had a riverboat trip.  The trip was ok, but nothing really to get excited about.  First they had a pilot demonstrate taking off and landing from the river near the boat.  That might have been more interesting if we hadn’t already seen plenty of float plane flights in the last couple of weeks.  But since we had, about the only real excitment was trying to decide if he was going to clobber the ducks or not.  Then further down the river we stopped near the kennels that had been Susan Butcher’s and her husband demostrated dog sledding (she died several years ago).  By now we’d had several demonstrations, so nothing really new here.  Finally it was the stop for the indian village, although they did most of their demonstrations on the boat because of the rain, then let us off to wander around.  Oddly, even though they claim it’s very unusual to get this much rain, they had plenty of umbrellas to hand out.  Oh, and this isn’t a small, intimate little riverboat cruise either.  The boat seats 900+ passengers.

Next it was time to pick up the rental car from the airport.  Turns out the Lodge actually had a free shuttle that could take you over there.  (Don’t think they’d do it if you had luggage, since then Princess would want to hit you up for the transfer fee, but for a single person just headed there without anything it was no problem.)  With the rain, we didn’t really want to do much that was outdoors, so we swung by the Fairbanks visitor center, then headed down the road to North Pole, Alaska, and visited the Santa House.  Yes, it’s about as bad as it sounds, but then, we have Bronner’s in Frankenmuth, so it’s hard to point fingers.  (But Bronner’s is far bigger).

Finally, it was back to downtown Fairbanks to wander around some of the shops there.  Downtown Fairbanks, well, it’s not exactly the most exciting place in the world.  Its kinda run down somewhat.  An art gallery that had been mentioned to us was there, but it was selling everything off after 30 years in business and going under, and quite frankly was probably one of the better shops there, so it’s not looking like it’s going to improve real soon.

Finally, we ended up heading back to the Lodge to have dinner (largely because we weren’t exactly inspired at what we were seeing as choices around town).  Considering I had prime rib I won’t even say that it really seemed too badly over priced (although it would get bad if you started ordering appetizers or salads).  Then it was time to start thinking about getting some headway on the packing, since late tomorrow it’s time to head back home.

(Oh, and we finally have neighbors, so we’ll see how that goes.)