We woke to a frigid morning on Saturday which formed the perfect backdrop to our first stop of the day: The Northpole. The town reincorporated with a new name awhile back in an effort to lure the toymaking industry with "made in the Northpole" labels. The gimic didn't quite work but it was a cute little haven of kitch with all the letters written by kids and addressed to "The Northpole" ending up here and posted on the walls. Nader still owes Allison big time for making her pose in this picture with Mr. and Mrs. Claus.
From there we headed north of Fairbanks to the Chena hotsprings, our most northern stop of the journey. The hotsprings were glorious -- although their true draw is as a wintertime destination where you can gaze at the northern lights while you soak. (After, that is, walking to the hotsprings in your bathingsuit in -30 degree whether...). They also have an ice museum/hotel at Chena. Everything in the museum/hotel is made of ice including the 4 bedrooms where for the price of $600 you can attempt to stay overnight wrapped in artic sleeping bags. About 30 couples have tried the adventure over the past 5 years but only 6 have made it through the whole night. The space is engineered to stay at 20 degrees all year long to maintain the sculptures inside... realizing as we froze during our 30 minute tour that it actually needs to be HEATED in the winter months to achieve this temperature, we felt very humbled by the strength that it takes to live in this part of the world during those long winter months.
Fairbanks was a fairly skipable pitstop (which we had been warned). From there it was down to Denali National Park, well almost. We woke in a wet tent and downpours that showed no sign of stopping and decided to push our backcountry adventure off by a week and head to the Kenai Peninsula and the town of Seward. The day cleared up past Anchorage (which we haven't yet explored, will do so on the way back up) and the drive was simply spectacular.
The weather gods who drowned out our Denali plans shown with all their glory yesterday. We took a day-long boat tour under shining sun that only hits these parts a handful of days each summer. What luck. We saw orcas, a humpback whale, dall's porpoises, sea otters, sea lions, harbor seals, bald eagle, puffins. And then there were the glaciers. Due to limited recent activity in the past week or so, our captain was able to navigate through the ice to get within 1/3 of a mile of one. We sat there for awhile watching and listening to the calving (when pieces of ice fall into the ocean). Like a storm rolling across a large pasture, the sound comes first as a slow thunderous rumble. The ice then splits as the departing chunk crashes into the sea below. Several moments later the wake of the fall would sway our boat. The awe of the experience silenced our boat of 100 some tourists for a good 15 minutes... a feat not to be underestimated. It was amazing. (Nader has better wildlife pictures than those shown here... he needs to fancify them, or whatever he does, and will upload them later).
One of Nader's colleagues from Tamale, Pete, happens to also be in Seward visiting his brother who's captain of one of the tour boats. Pete himself spent several summers in Seward working as part of the significant seasonal crew here to support the fishing and tourism. Through Pete and his brother Gary we've been able to check out some of the local flavor in town. Rain's in the forecast for the next several days so we're planning our next move... After many days of driving it's been great to take a little pause in this friendly town.
Oh, and Nader did get to see his grizzly just a few hours after the last post about wanting to see one. It ambled across a wide expanse next to the highway and we marveled at it's glory (Allison, very happy to be doing so from the car....).
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