After Denali, we drove to Fairbanks and arrived there just in time for a late dinner in a good and historical restaurant:
The next morning, we got breakfast at our hotel and went to our reindeer tour, which sure was fun:
The story is a family who bought a couple of reindeer for their daughter who really wanted some, and then they ended up with a bunch of them that they keep as pets and now show around to tourists to help pay for their fees:
After the reindeer fun, we went to see Mary Shields next door. She was the first woman to win the 1000+ mile dog sled race in Alaska. She still keeps her sled dogs and tells her stories over milk and cookies to people who come visit her. Our conflicting schedule didn't allow us to spend the full tour time with her, but she nicely gave us a quick tour and showed us her nice dogs:
Mary sadly had to get part of her leg amputated, but that doesn't stop her from getting around
We then went to the AK pipeline viewing point, and saw some people training on the street. The pipeline took 8 billing dollars to build and is an impressive achievement:
We then went to the excellent visitor center, watched a couple of its movies including one on the aurora, and then went through its museum which was well worth an hour:
oil revenue after the pipeline was built was shared with AK residents as a dividend
We then went to see the ice museum, which was a lot of fun (19:00-20:00), and its own aurora show that was right afterwards (20:00 to 21:00):
It wasn't a huge slide, but for an indoor ice slide in the middle of warm weather, it was fun :)
The rest of the scupltures were nice too:
ice bar
the owner is an expert ice sculptor and gave us a demo
The next morning, we started with Museum of the North, which was closed the previous day. It was quite good and worth multiple hours:
we learned about more 'evacuation' camps in AK during WWII
climbers of denali
more climbers but they don't all make it up, it's a long trip
We learned about the very long road that was built to Canada in record time (10 months):
And earthquakes:
Next, we went to the botanical garden which was in surprisingly good shape despite it being late in the season:
Next, was pioneer park to see the air museum, and it also happened to have an old town for tourists, although it was mostly shut down that late in the season, but we found a couple of other museums:
The air museum was quite small, but worth 30mn or so:
It was then time to get back to the airport to catch our plane to Anchorage:
