Day 1 & 2: Fairbanks, Alaska

Riverboat cruise in Fairbanks, Alaska

June 4, 2007

The first day of our vacation wasn't too exciting since we spent most of it on airplanes, waiting in airports, and getting yelled at by a crabby old woman who Matthew had the displeasure of sitting in front of on the plane. Bless his heart, he was so good and hardly touched her seat when she turned around and yelled at him. After the third time, I yelled back and she didn't bother us anymore. Once we finally arrived and found our lodging, it was rather amusing to see the kids reation to 21 hours of daylight! It took awhile, but they FINALLY fell asleep that first night. The sun set at 12:15 am and then came up again at 3:15 am, but it never really did get dark, just dusk.


The fun really started the second day. We enjoyed a 3 1/2 hour Riverboat Cruise on the beautiful Chena and Tanana Rivers. We learned that "na" means river in the native indians language. They provided some fabulous demonstrations by a bush plane and at Susan Butcher's sled dog mushers camp and then we toured a beautiful Athabascan Native Indian camp. It was a beautiful morning!


The next stop was lunch in downtown Fairbanks. We tried a little place called Soapy Smith's. The decor was great but the food was so-so & the owner was a bit overbearing. After a short walk around the downtown area, we stopped to get a good look at the Alaska Pipeline ~ which was very interesting! Then ... it was time to pan for GOLD! That was a ton of fun and the kids were sure they would be rich by the end of the day! Between the four of us, we managed to pan about $25 worth of gold flakes, but we had a great time looking for those big gold nuggets.

That's the end of the first few days. Stay tuned...