Our last day in Alaska was jam packed.

Like most of the places we’ve visited, Fairbanks dates to the early 1900s when gold encouraged so many to take a stab at their luck. The difference between this boomtown and almost all of the others is that the construction of the Alaska Railroad, the Alaska Highway, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAP) contributed greatly to the growth of Fairbanks, not its decline. It’s now a metropolis of 100,000 and has the bragging rights of having the U.S.’s northern most everything: northernmost Costco, northernmost university, northernmost city with public road access, northernmost hospital, etc.

Ronnie is still dragging, so he and Hettie took advantage of their large suite to relax and rest up for the flight home. The rest of us piled on the bus and headed outside the city center to see a small above-ground section of the TAP. This 48-inch diameter pipeline conveys oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay in the far north to Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in North America, which is in southcentral Alaska. The crude oil pipeline, in operation since 1977, is privately owned and came at a cost of $8 billion. Tell me that does not come out to $10 million dollars a mile.

From the pipeline we headed to the University of Alaska Museum of the North where we enjoyed art and arctic natural history collections. We saw things like a waterproof parka made out of salmon skin; beadwork; intricate woven baskets; carvings; gold in all its natural forms; a basket made of fish skin, driftwood and reeds; a 5,500 pound copper nugget; and beautiful as well as weird paintings. Oddly the most memorable thing about the museum to me is the building itself made of white reflective panels that look like an artic wind sculpted it.

Just for the novelty of saying we were there, we zipped over to North Pole, where the spirit of Christmas lives year-round, for a 45 minute stop. Yep, that’s the town’s name. There’s a huge Christmas themed store; a reindeer experience; street names like Santa Claus Lane, Kris Kringle Drive, and Mistletoe Lane; and candy cane–striped street lights all over town.

No rest for the weary. We saddled up (got on the bus) and headed to our main attraction of the day: a cruise down the Chena River on a sternwheeler. It was one of my favorite things on the whole trip. The commentator, who came to Alaska as an Air Force dependent and stayed on to become an Alaskan, delivered fast paced and interesting commentary throughout. We were about five minutes from the dock when we stopped to chat with a pilot who was using the river as a runway. The commentator asked him a few questions and then the pilot took off and landed for our viewing pleasure. We also stopped a few yards off shore next to Trail Breaker Kennel, Susan Butcher and her husband’s dog sled camp. Sadly she died of cancer 17 years ago, but their two daughters and her husband still own and operate the camp. He spoke with us about their work with the dogs and his love of mushing. Our last stop was at Chena Village, an Athabascan fishing camp where we were shown furs, dwellings, clothing, birch bark commodities, and fishing and preserving techniques.

We were all tired when we got back to the hotel but stayed focused on what needed doing before we met for dinner in the hotel restaurant. We said our good byes and went our separate ways after dinner grateful for the unpredicted great weather that allowed for an even better trip than we anticipated.

Cyd, Barb, Hettie, and Ronnie (still feeling rotten!) will head to the airport in a couple hours for their middle-of-the-night flights and Cleone, Walter, Dan, and I will follow at 6:00 tomorrow morning. Hard to believe our Alaska adventure started two weeks ago today.

Everyone is headed home except us. We are on a nonstop to Seattle where we’ll layover a couple nights and enjoy the hospitality of our old Army buddies Ed and Viv.

… In Conclusion …

This is the last week of what is referred to up here as ‘the season.’
The last cruise ships head south Saturday.

With only three quarters of a million people Alaska can’t possibly host all the summer tourists on its own, so people are recruited from all over the world. We had a waitress from Turkey,
guides from the lower-48, drivers from Eastern Europe, sales clerks from Asia.

The growing season in Alaska is approximately 100 days.
That rules out a lot of produce, but the ones that do like the looooong days and cool climes can get huge fast. In fact there are huge-veggie contests for things like broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower,
lettuce, peas, radishes, rutabaga, Swiss chard, and turnips.