WHITTIER TO FAIRBANKS – INTO THE INTERIOR OF ALASKA

September 11, 2019

My disembarkation time was 7:20, so I got up very early to give myself one last stab at the buffet before leaving.  We had been instructed to put our luggage out for collection the night before, but had also been instructed to bring only a small tote bag on the train.  These two instructions were contradictory.  I did the best I could but, with my valuables, toiletries, pajamas, and warm outerwear, my backpack was anything but small.  If I hadn’t waited until I changed into my pajamas to put my luggage out (later than requested), I never could have stuffed it all in.

Disembarking from the Coral Princess

We had each been assigned a disembarkation group.  My group met in the Bordeaux dining room.  As soon as we were all assembled, we filed off the ship.  There was a long covered tunnel leading from the ship to the train terminal and another from the terminal to the train.  It must have rained a lot in Whittier but it wasn’t raining that morning. 

Train Station in Whittier

There wasn’t much to the town of Whittier beside the cruise ship docks and the train terminal.  Most people appeared to live in large, institutional looking apartment blocks.  Whittier was an ice free port and had been constructed by the military to bring supplies to troops stationed in Alaska.  The town was accessed from Anchorage via a single lane tunnel used by both cars and trains.  Vehicles had to wait for specific times to pass in the desired direction.

Interior of Train Car

The Turn Again Arm

We didn’t hang around in the station but proceeded directly to the train.  I was feeling very ill and could barely keep my eyes open.  All I wanted to do was find my seat and go to sleep.  Luckily, being a solo traveler, I ended up with two seats to myself.  It turned out that I had plenty of room for my belongings.  Sleep, however, would turn out to be elusive.  Our car had a very animated young man named Landon who narrated, sang, and played the harmonica and ukulele as we went.  He was amusing, but hard to sleep through.  The scenery was also compelling and it seemed a shame to close my eyes, although I did nod off frequently.

Anchorage and Conoco Phillips Building

Between Anchorage & Wasila

Once we emerged from the tunnel, we followed the Turn Again Arm to Cook’s Inlet.  Turn Again Arm was so named because, when Cook explored it, he had to turn the ship constantly to avoid sand bars.  We spotted white dots in the water that represented the backs of beluga whales.  We reached Anchorage at about the halfway point and then continued on to Wasilla.  Anchorage was dominated by the Conoco Phillips building at 296 feet tall.  Some 400,000 people live in the Anchorage area, over 40% of the population of the entire state.  It still seemed like a small city.

Wasila

Wasilla was even smaller.  We rolled past the house where Sarah Palin grew up.  She had moved to Scottsdale, AZ.  Wasilla is the duct tape capital of the world.  Every year, they hold a duct tape ball where all the gowns must be made of the ubiquitous material.

Cabin "Off the Grid"

Fall Color North of Wasilla

View from the Trestle

Past Wasilla, we finally pushed into the bush and the scenery grew more commanding.  People living in the area can reach their abodes only by train.  We were on an express operated by Princess Cruises, but the Alaska Railroad trains stop whenever someone flags them down.  During the winter months, those trains run only once a month.  At one point, we passed over a trestle that was inches taller than the Conoco Phillips building in Anchorage and offered a spectacular view of the river below.  Then we wound our way through the mountains to the Denali station.

Princess Cruises operated two lodges in the Denali area, the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge near Talkeetna and the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge further north near the beginning of the Parks Highway.  I did not recall being offered the option of visiting both, possibly because I booked through AARP, but many of my fellow cruisers visited the McKinley Lodge for a night before joining me at the Denali Lodge.  That would have been interesting and I regretted missing Talkeetna and seeing the mountain from a closer perspective.

I was exhausted by the time we reached the lodge but had a tour of a sled dog kennel scheduled for minutes after we arrived.  I dropped my gear in my room and dragged myself back to the main lodge to catch my shuttle.  I was glad that I hadn’t decided to stay home as soon as I arrived and was handed a warm, squirming husky puppy.  My puppy was named Prawn.  Each litter was given a theme and all the puppies’ names were derived from that theme.  My puppy came from the “seafood” litter.

The Runt

The Dog Yard

We played with the puppies until everyone gathered for the show and then sat outside in front of the dog yard where there was a long treadmill resembling a truck scale.  Each dog in the dog yard was chained with enough length that he or she could run around and jump on top of the dog house, but not so much length that they could breed indiscriminately.   

The Dogs Seemed Happy

Having tried, unsuccessfully, to chain and otherwise contain huskies, I wondered how they managed to make that work.  One of my huskies had broken a choke chain.  These dogs were not alone, however, so maybe they were more content.  They certainly seemed happy.

Dog Running in a "Hamster" Wheel

Alaskan huskies don’t look much like what most people think of when they think of huskies.  They are smaller, slimmer, and not as furry.  They varied tremendously and looked more like mutts than anything else.  They were, however, fast.  They were bred to run and survive harsh conditions.  They loved to run and would even run in big “hamster” wheels.

The handlers harnessed eight dogs to an ATV since there was no snow on the ground, and they pulled it up onto the treadmill and then ran like crazy on the treadmill to demonstrate.  All the dogs wanted to be chosen for the team and the barking was cacophonous.  That surprised me because none of my huskies ever barked.  They talked and howled, but never barked.  That must be another difference between the Alaskan and Siberian husky breeds.

Jeff King and His Sled

Once we had witnessed the dogs running, we moved indoors where Jeff King, four time Iditarod champion and proprietor of the kennel, gave us a presentation on what it was like to run the Iditarod. He had invented a new type of dogsled where the musher could sit down and that sled was now the standard.  Its one drawback was that it was too comfortable and mushers could fall asleep and fall off.  Catching a runaway sled team could be tough.  While I would have loved to try dog sledding, I had absolutely no desire to tackle racing over a thousand miles across Alaska in the dead of winter.  Still, I enjoyed his presentation and learning about the dogs.

It was after 21:30 when we returned to the lodge.  I felt awful, but needed to eat something more than the soup and crackers I had ordered in the train’s dining car.  Most of the restaurants were closed, so I went to Fannie Q’s Saloon where I got a beer, some garlic bread, and a bowl of potato soup containing an entire sausage. They had a good piano player and I enjoyed listening to him, but stayed only long enough to eat my dinner before heading for my bed.

September 12, 2019

The Princess Denali Wilderness Lodge

Denali National Park (originally Mt. McKinley National Park) came into being largely through the efforts of a young hunter and conservationist named Charles Sheldon.  Sheldon came to Alaska in 1906 to hunt the Dall Sheep.  Arriving in Anchorage, he sought a guide to lead him into the interior.  A man named Harry Karstens was recommended and, being most familiar with the area that would become Denali National Park, that is where he led Sheldon.  Sheldon fell in love with the area and became concerned that the Dall sheep were being hunted to extinction because they provided the tastiest and easiest source of protein for the local miners.  Returning to the lower 48, Sheldon spent the next eleven years campaigning to preserve the Dall sheep and their habitat.  In 1917, the first two million acres were designated a national park.  Funding for the park, however, would have to wait until 1921.  Harry Karstens would be named the first park superintendent.

Our First Glimpse of Denali

Karstens’ mission was twofold: to protect the wildlife and landscape for future generations and to provide access to the park’s wonders.  To provide access, he needed to construct a road into the area.  The construction of a road into untrammeled wilderness was controversial and it was not until the park service formed an unlikely alliance with the miners of Kantishna, promising to push the road all the way through to their gold claims, that construction was able to begin.  Ultimately, the park boundaries would grow to encompass Kantishna and mining operations would be halted.  Land owners either sold out to the park service or opened lodges.  Today, the park boasts over six million acres.  The resident herd of caribou is able to complete its migration within the boundaries of the park.

The Road Reached Deep into the Denali Wilderness

Thankfully, my tour of Denali National Park did not depart until 9:30.  I was able to get a good night’s sleep and enjoy a Starbuck’s coffee and a disappointing cinnamon roll before leaving.  I had upgraded my tour from the half-day Natural History Tour included with my package to the full day Tundra Wilderness Tour.  The one fortunate thing about having skipped the McKinley Lodge was that I had arrived in time for the last day of the Tundra Wilderness Tour.  There is only one road leading into Denali National Park and access to that road is very controlled to maintain the wildlife in its natural state.  Visitors must take some form of tour bus, park shuttle, or shuttle operated by one of the lodges in Kantishna at the end of the road.

Once a year, at the end of the season, winners of a lottery were allowed to drive the road in their private vehicles over the course of the last five days of the season.  After that, the road would be closed for the winter.  The Tundra Wilderness Tour went out to mile 62 before turning around. The Natural History Tour, which continued for another week or so, went only to mile 30.

Our Tour Bus

Beyond the first few miles, the road was gravel.  Because the permafrost was melting, landslides were common.  In one spot, the road had slumped eight feet over the winter.  2019 had been a very strange year.  It had been uncommonly dry and warm until August and then, during the month of August alone, they had received nineteen inches of rain – more than the average rainfall for an entire year.

The buses were of the school bus variety, although the seats were upgraded to accommodate adult bodies.  They were actually quite comfortable.  We stopped every ninety minutes at restroom facilities and also whenever we spotted wildlife.  We saw lots of wildlife.  

Grizzly by the River

Grizzly Digging Up Roots

The Grizzlies in Denali Were Blond

Grizzly bears were seemingly everywhere, digging up roots because the odd summer weather had limited the berry harvest.  Most of the bears in the Denali area were blond colored.  We saw a young, male Dall sheep wandering near the road, which was very rare.  Usually, they are only spotted as little white dots on a hillside where one is lucky to be able to distinguish legs.

Young Male Dall Sheep

Dall Sheep Are Usually Seen from Afar

We drove further and further into the park, climbing from an arboreal forest of stunted spruce and birch to the tundra where there was nowhere for animals to hide.  Grizzly bears are actually creatures of the tundra and we saw them frequently.  Only thirty percent of visitors to the park ever get to see Denali (an Athabaskan word meaning, “great one”.)  We had caught glimpses of a peak or ridge as we drove through the park, but nothing like a clear view.  As we finally reached the turnaround point of Stony Pass at mile 62, we finally got to see the mountain in all its glory.  We hadn’t seen moose or wolves, but at least we got to see the mountain.

During the late 1930s, a precipitous drop in the number of Dall sheep drove the park service to commission a study by the biologist Adolf Murie who had worked in the park since his graduate student days in 1922.  Many people believed that it was wolves who were devouring the sheep and advocated hunting these predators.  Murie spent three years studying the relationship between the sheep and the wolves and reached the conclusion that predation by wolves only made the herds stronger.  Wolves were very selective in choosing their prey and always killed the weakest members of the herd.  Ultimately, he concluded that it had been a series of unusually harsh winters that had caused the population of Dall sheep to fall.  Murie’s conclusion was not popular, but the park service stood behind him.  As a result, Denali’s ecosystem remains completely natural to this day.

View from the Top of Polychrome Pass

Recently, there has been a large drop in the number of caribou and wolves in the park.  Formerly, no hunting was allowed in a buffer zone around the park.  This zone included a bottleneck where the caribou and the wolves that hunt them passed during their migration.  Two years ago, the ban on hunting in this zone was lifted and hunters began harvesting the wolves.  Hopefully, the ban will be reinstated before it is too late for the wolves.

Denali in All Its Glory

Retreating glaciers left behind wide, flat bottomed valleys.  Modern rivers meandered through them, changing their courses with the spring runoff and producing what are referred to as "braided" rivers interspersed with sand bars.

Typical "Braided" River

We almost missed seeing a caribou reclining on a hillside.  Only his antlers were visible from afar and they looked like dead wood to my untrained eye.  Caribou are quite large.  While caribou and reindeer are technically the same species, caribou are found in North America and reindeer in Europe and Asia.  Caribou are wild and larger in size, while reindeer have been domesticated.  Both sexes grow antlers.  The males shed their antlers after the mating season, but the females retain theirs and ultimately eat them to provide a source of calcium during their pregnancies.

Reclining Male Caribou

The Subway Was Closed for the Season

We returned to the lodge in the late afternoon.  














It was early for dinner, but I decided to walk across the highway and pick up some wine and a sandwich for dinner.  Unfortunately, I bought the wine first.  When I arrived at the Subway Sandwich shop,  I found it closed for the winter.  There was nowhere else to get food to go and I had already bought wine, so I ended up with a can of Vienna sausages and a piece of cheese for dinner.  I was sick and tired and only managed to write for a short time before I gave up and went to sleep.

September 13, 2019

The Building Where I Stayed at the Denali Lodge

The coach to Fairbanks didn’t leave until 11:00, so I had time to relax and enjoy a leisurely latte before we left.  I still felt quite ill and was coughing badly.  I was glad for a day with no big plans.

Stunted Spruce Trees on the Way to Fairbanks

The drive to Fairbanks was not spectacular.  We passed through mile upon mile of rolling hills covered in stunted spruce and birch trees.  The birches had turned golden and were pretty, but nothing compared to the views within Denali.  We paused for a bathroom break at the cultural center in the native village of Nenana.  Local artisans peddled their wares within.  I bought a beaded bob to decorate the end of my braid.  

The Nenana Cultural Center

The Tripod and Clock Tower for the Nenana Ice Classic

Nenana was famous for the Nenana Ice Classic.  Every winter, once the river froze, a wooden tripod was dragged out onto the ice and tethered to a clock tower.  People placed bets as to the date and time that the river ice would break up.  When the ice finally did break, the tripod would move and it’s motion would stop the clock.  Whoever had guessed closest to the actual time won the pot.  This year, someone had won over $300,000.

Fairbanks was unassuming.  The most imposing structure was the museum at the university.  Much of the architecture was uninspired wood frame construction that could have belonged anywhere.  Our hotel, The Princess Fairbanks Riverside Lodge, was no exception.  The clam chowder that I ate for lunch was so rich that I felt ill all afternoon and never did eat dinner.

I was very tempted just to crawl into my bed after lunch, but knew that my time in Fairbanks was very limited.  I bought a ticket on the downtown shuttle for $10 and rode into the city, such as it was.  One could say that downtown Fairbanks was dying, but it was possibly just in transition.  It was unmistakable that all real shopping and commerce had moved out of the downtown area and into strip malls along the main roads.  The downtown was a confusing melange of mangy, boarded up hotels and glitzy, new government buildings.  The courthouse was gorgeous, as was the Morris Thompson Cultural Center which housed an interesting museum (free admission) and various classrooms and meeting spaces.

Courthouse Next to Abandoned Hotel

I took the shuttle to the “log cabin” stop and then walked back along the Chena river to the cultural center.  It was 71 degrees in downtown Fairbanks that afternoon and the riverside park was lovely.  The trees had turned color and flowers were everywhere.  It was strange to see spring and fall seemingly happening simultaneously.  Close to the cultural center, the walkway passed through an arch made from caribou and moose antlers.  The antlers were donated by hunters all over the state.  Each set of antlers represented a story and the arch symbolized the oral history of Alaska's people.

The Log Cabin

After World War II, the USA sent millions of dollars worth of aid to Europe and Russia to help them rebuild.  Much of that aid was flown from Alaska to Siberia.  A monument to those      aviators stood in the downtown park.

I barely had enough energy left to visit the museum and then stumble to the bus stop.  When the shuttle returned to the hotel, I went straight to my room and crawled into bed.  I was too tired to write or play the guitar.  The best I could manage was to watch an hour of television before passing out.

Flowers in the Park

Aviator Monument

Arch of Antlers

Morris Thompson Cultural Center

September 14, 2019

Birch Forest

My tour didn’t depart until 9:40.  Although I was awake by 7:00, I didn’t drag myself out of bed until after 8:00.  I still didn’t feel strong.  I went down to the lobby and spent an hour consuming a latte and a blueberry scone.  I didn’t have the energy to walk back upstairs, so hung out in the lobby until the bus began boarding.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Our first stop was Gold Dredge Number 8.  We drove from the hotel through forests of birch trees in fall color.  Our tour commenced near a section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.  It was interesting to see after hearing about it for forty some years.  Five hundred thousand barrels of oil moved through that pipeline daily.  The oil came out of the ground at 120 degrees, so the pipeline needed to be designed so that the heat wouldn’t melt the permafrost.  When permafrost melts, the behavior of the soil is unpredictable and anything built on it is endangered.  In areas where the ground was frozen, the pipeline was elevated.  This had the added benefit of allowing wildlife to pass beneath it.  When the pipeline was first proposed, everyone was concerned that it would disturb the migration of the caribou.  This turned out not to be a problem.  The caribou have adapted to the pipeline just fine.

Pipeline Scar

The pipeline measured forty-eight inches in diameter.  The pipe carrying the oil was surrounded by a layer of insulation and then a protective metal sheath.  Where the ground was not frozen, the pipeline was buried.  Certain sections needed to be buried in permafrost and those sections were heavily insulated.  The elevated sections floated above supports to which they were not attached.  This allowed them to move during earthquakes.  They were built to withstand up to a magnitude 8.2 earthquake.  Above ground sections of the pipeline were built in a zig-zag pattern to allow the pipeline to move even more during earthquakes.  The scar through the trees where the pipeline ran was quite visible.

Cleaning Pig in the Pipeline

Paraffin and petroleum jelly build up on the inside of the pipeline, impeding the flow of oil.  To keep the pipeline clean, rubber “pigs” were introduced into the pipeline where the pressure of the flowing oil forced them along, scraping the walls of the pipeline clean as they went.

The Tour Train Carriages

Once our group had gathered at the pipeline, we boarded a train with open carriages which took us to the dredge.  Along the way, we passed displays explaining the history of gold mining in the area.  When gold was first discovered in Fairbanks, miners dug it up by hand.  The gold was found where the layer of sand and gravel met the bedrock.  To get there, miners first had to dig through a layer of frozen dirt and mud called “overburden.”  To do this, they pounded perforated metal tubes into the ground and injected steam into the ground to soften it.  Then they sunk a shaft.  The sand and gravel was loaded into buckets which were hauled to the surface where the material was washed through sluice boxes to separate out the gold.  This method, called “drift mining,” was used for a couple of years until the richest claims were played out and the cost of getting at the gold began to exceed the reward.  That was when the large scale mining began.

Steam Boiler and Mine Shaft

Steam Injection Tubes

Sluice Box

Water Cannon

To prepare the ground for large-scale mining, up to 150 feet of overburden first needed to be removed.  To do this, they pumped steam into the frozen ground to soften it and then blasted the soil away with water cannons.  An entire stream was diverted to provide water for the mining operation.  Once the overburden was gone, a pit was dug in the gravel layer and filled with water.  Massive dredges were then placed in the pits.  These dredges chewed sand and gravel out of the ground on one end, ran the material through a series of sorters and sluice boxes, and spit the resulting debris out the back onto piles of “tailings.”

The fine sediment containing the gold or “paydirt” was then loaded into boxes and sent to a central location for refining.  The resulting gold was poured into gold bars and then mailed via the postal service to the U.S. Mint.  Not one bar was ever lost in the mail.  At one time, there were eight gold dredges operating in the Fairbanks area.

Digging Buckets

Gold Dredge Number 8

The Interior of the Sorter

Sluice Boxes in the Dredge

The Fairbanks gold rush was over by the 1930s, but gold is still mined there today and improved technology makes it likely that it will continue to be mined in the future.  Fairbanks is called the “Golden Heart City.”

Panning Shed

Once we reached the location of Gold Dredge Number 8, we left the train and proceeded to a big shed full of water troughs where each of us was given a “poke” full of paydirt to pan.  It was an interesting process, sloshing the dirt and gravel to separate the soil from the heavier parts and then picking out the larger rocks.  Towards the end, when we were dipping the pans into the water repeatedly, it seemed like any gold would surely be washed away with everything else.  However, when I was finished, there was a whopping $12 worth of gold in the bottom of my pan.  Each poke was seeded with gold, of course, but it was still fun and interesting.

My Gold Pan

The Gift Shop

I ditched the gift shop and used the time to walk through the actual dredge.  It reminded me of my time managing a sand and gravel pit back in the 1990s.  The conveyors and sorters hadn’t changed all that much.  The dredge sat in a pond and was gradually moved forward and side to side to keep the digging portion working in the layer where gold could be found.  Tailings filled in the pond behind the dredge as it moved.

They left us at the gift shop for an hour and a half.  Despite my best efforts, I still ended up doing my gift shopping there, although I resisted spending more on jewelry to display the gold I had found than the value of that gold.  Eventually, we were loaded back onto the train and returned to the parking lot where our bus was waiting to take us to the riverboat.

Five generations of Binkleys had operated river boats on the Chena and Tanana rivers.  Originally, they brought freight to Fairbanks but, since the 1950s, they had operated tours on the Chena River.  The current 280 ton, four decked, stern wheeler was named the Discovery III.  Despite her bulk, she drew only 39 inches.  The captain joked that, if we ran aground, we could all get out and push.  

The Discovery III

Fairbanks had been founded where the riverboat of the turn of the century ran aground and could advance no further.  The Chena River runs right through the heart of Fairbanks.

The river tour is big business today.  The landing boasts shops and a big dining room where we ate a family style meal such as would have been served to miners in the day – sort of.  The caribou stew and roasted vegetables might have been authentic, but I doubted that miners had access to lettuce with goat cheese and pecans.  I, however, was grateful for the

Riverboat Landing

salad because the stew was flavorless and there was little in my portion besides limp celery.

1951 Piper Cub

Once lunch was finished, we all loaded onto the riverboat.  Our bus driver had suggested that we sit on the top deck facing the shore.  That was a good call and I made sure I got a spot up there where I could take photos.  The tour began with a demonstration by a seaplane.  The plane was a Piper Cub from 1951.  The Piper Cubs were still popular because they could take off and land in a very short distance which made them perfect for flying in Alaska where airfields were often makeshift.  They worked equally well with wheels, skis, or floats.

The Trailbreaker Kennel

After the seaplane had finished showing off, we continued on to the Trailbreaker Kennel where we saw another dog team pulling an ATV.  The Trailbreaker Kennel had belonged to Susan Butcher who won the Iditarod four times before succumbing to cancer.  It was still operated by her husband who narrated that section of the tour.  
Once the dogs were unharnessed, they ran into the river and cavorted in the water.  The boat continued until it reached the confluence of the Chena and Tanana Rivers.  Then it very carefully spun around, using powerful bow thrusters.  A traditional stern wheeler of that size could never have turned around in that narrow channel.  It was an impressive maneuver.

Huskies Swimming in the River

Heading back upstream, we disembarked at a Chena fish camp that had been constructed beside the river to serve as a museum.  The buildings were authentic, but had been moved there from other locations.  Native guides explained how they caught and cured the salmon.  A fish wheel, powered by the river current, scooped the fish from the water.  They were then filleted, dried, and smoked.  High quality salmon were cured for human consumption and the lower quality fish were preserved to be used as dog food during the winter.

Where the Chena Meets the Tanana

Chena Fish Camp and Fish Wheel

Cache Displaying Pelts

Reindeer

Chena Winter Parka

We disembarked from the riverboat, were split into three groups, and were rotated through presentations on fur trapping, caribou hunting, and native crafts.  They had a small herd of reindeer for us to view.  Most of them (probably females) still had the velvet on their antlers and they looked very fuzzy and were a beautiful, chocolate brown.  After the presentations, we had half an hour to walk through the exhibits.  Most of us went to see the sled dogs.  I did leave the dogs in time to visit the reindeer and also check out the exhibit showing two bull moose that had been found dead with their antlers locked together.  Taxidermists had preserved them and they were impressive to see.  It was a real shame that two such powerful animals had met such an unfortunate end.

Two Bull Moose with Their Antlers Fatally Tangled

Riverside Home

We finished our cruise by gliding past the lovely homes lining the river.  Alaska wasn’t big on building codes, so the homes were a mixed bag, running from motorhomes sitting in lots of junk to elaborate mansions.  It looked like a nice place to live … in the summer.

Log Cabin Style Home

Alaskan BBQ

The Princess Fairbanks Riverside Lodge

We were returned to our hotel about 5:30.  I wanted to walk downtown to find some dinner, but first I took a turn around the hotel grounds.  There were several interesting displays about the pipeline and Fairbanks and a lovely kitchen garden alongside the river.  I went to my room to drop off my camera and backpack, but couldn’t get in.  The battery in my door lock had run out.  I had to wait for half an hour until someone could come to repair it.  That put me behind schedule for getting to town and back before dark.

Kitchen Garden at the Lodge

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Path Along the Freeway

I was somewhat hazy about how to walk to town, as we had always taken the freeway in the bus.  Everyone said it was only half a mile to the shopping center, but I must have gone the wrong direction.  I came to the freeway bridge and found it closed for repairs.  I had to wait for an escort to walk me across.  Once I got to the other side, it turned out I was on the wrong side of the river and headed towards the university, rather than town.  Since my nieces had attended the University of Alaska at 

Fairbanks, I decided to make the best of it and just walk that direction.  I had to walk all the way to the university exit before I could cross to the other side of the highway.  I hoped that I could cross on the other side of the bridge which was still open.  Unfortunately, the pedestrian walkway was only on the closed side, so I had to wait while they flooded the bridge with water to test for leaks before the escort could walk me back across.  At that point, I was tired and still sick so I gave up on getting dinner in town and just ate in the hotel restaurant before returning to my room to pack.

Flooding the Freeway Overpass

My flight left at 1:50 AM, so my airport shuttle left at 11:20.  As much as I wanted to sleep, I didn’t dare.  I wrote until it was time to leave.  Then I dragged my belongings to the lobby, boarded the bus, and headed to the airport.  I hoped that I might get a chance to see the northern lights before I left, but it was not to be.  I was doomed to spend the night in a middle seat where I could neither sleep nor see out the window.