North Pole and Fairbanks, AK 7/8-7/9 2008

Me at the Ice Museum in Fairbanks

Renae and Aunt Ethel Faye at the Ice Museum

A cow moose outside Aunt Ethel Faye's house

All three of us at the Santa Claus's house.

I slept in this morning until 7am maybe 730am, Renae slept in to 0630 so that was really nice. It was a rainy overcast day. Aunt Ethel Faye went into town to go see about her car and a rental. Renae and I stayed at the house and relaxed a little bit more. AEF came back and we headed into North Pole for lunch. After lunch we headed out to the Knotty Shop so Renae could get some ice cream, which AEF said was really good. The Knotty Shop had some pretty cool things and we bought a few gifts and then headed to the Santa Claus shop. What an overwhelming Christmas store. But we found a few things that we got for the Christmas tree that is most definitely going up this year.

AEF said that she wouldn't let us leave without going to the ICE Museum so we headed into Fairbanks and watched the movie about the ICE festival and watched a demonstration. They also had some ice sculptures in 20 degree freezers that we could look at. It was pretty cool to see the different sculptures. We then went to one of the stores that we saw the first day in Fairbanks and bought some gifts.

Later the night of the 8th Frank and his wife Carol came over as well as Lou and Adeline for supper. They cooked some of the fish that we caught. I really liked the Halibut which was surprising and Renae liked both the Halibut and Cod. Frank ate some shrimp that had eggs, never seen the likes, they laughed at me some more, but it was fun times.

Wednesday Renae and AEF went into town (not sure which one) but they got the fish taken care off as far as mailing it back to Junction and then went to see the hospital on Fort Wainwright. Me I laid around like I was on vacation and read my book and played with AEF's cat Tom. Which by the way we were really happy that Aunt Ethel Faye had a cat because we were missing ours. Tom really liked lots of attention and we were happy to provide that to him. When Renae got back we were sitting in the front room and a cow moose was walking right near the house in the Slough (creek like body of water only not moving but not stagnant). Renae I took lots of pictures because this was the only moose that we saw close up. We finished up our laundry, packed suitcases and backpacks, then went over to see Frank and Carol before going to the airport. We said our goodbyes or see ya again and then headed to Fairbanks. Of course we stopped at Hot Licks at 9:58pm 2 min before they closed and got some ice cream. AEF then showed us the Fairbanks hospital and we headed to the airport. Renae and I checked in and did some more shopping, lol, and played some cards before we got on our plane at 0105 in the morning. They had a couple of message chairs by our terminal so we bought a couple of minutes and had a back message. Sweet. Off to Salt Lake City and back to 100 degree weather in Junction. Thanks for the great trip.