Fairbanks
May 16th 2003
(Our 1st official day of Vacation)


We were able to sleep in today. Since we were are on our own without any set plans. We made ourselves presentable, then went to eat breakfast at the hotel. The food was ok for hotel food.

After breakfast we drove out to the University of Alaska to go to the Alaska museum. There was a ton of stuff to see here. We overheard that they only put out 1% of their entire collection. One of the things that stood out was their gem collection. They had Montana sapphires. It looks like the only place in North America that they mine saphires is in Montana. Neither of us knew that. We bought our token ornament from the gift shop.

We drove down the road and could not find the botanical gardens. We figured that it was probably too early in the season. One of the things we came to learn over the entire trip is that most people are just starting up for the season in Alaska and they are not very together yet.

We decided to just drive around for a little while until we reached the pipeline viewers station. We also passed the gold dredge we would be visiting the next day. Both Angie and I stood on the pipeline, just at the point the pipeline entered the ground. There was a piece of pipeline that had its pipe cleaner displayed. Both Angie and I sat inside of it.

After sitting in the pipeline, we drove back to Fairbanks and stopped at the visitors center. We bought a walking tour guide for a dollar. After taking some pictures we started on the walking tour. One of the stops was the train depot. They had a penny machine! We walked some more and got to number 13 on the list and saw Gambardella's Pasta Bella Italian restaurant. Both Angie and I were hungry, so we stopped for lunch. Walking into the restaurant the great smell of Italian cooking hits you.

Angie ordered a meatball sandwich with soup and Steve ordered the Pesto Pasta. They didn't take Discover card, bummer. After we finished our meal, we left the restaurant and walked back to the car. We stopped at a souvenir shop on the way back to the car. I picked up some trinkets. We decided to try and complete the walking tour by car. It was very hard to do and I don't recommend it. If you have the two hours to do this, you should walk this tour. It was very relaxing to walk downtown by the river.

After our sightseeing, we headed back to the airport to return our rental car. When we arrived, a large group of cruisers had arrived on a flight. They were all getting the sales pitch and request to fill out the SARS forms for the cruise. We called the hotel so they could send the hotel shuttle and returned to the hotel. A short thirty minutes later we were back at the hotel.

We picked up our vouchers for our Grayline tours, we wondered when we would get them, as our documents stated they would be mailed to us. Our first organized trip was a flight tour up to Fort Yukon by air. This was just above the Artic Circle. The flight was great. We circled around one of the mountains where the pilot said had some sheep on it. Nobody else could see them. It was because they were white and so was the snow on the mountain. The pilot bumped the plane when we crossed the Artic Circle ;-)

Once we arrived at Fort Yukon, we boarded a bus. There was just the four of us. One other couple from Florida. (Mike and Judith). On the bus with our native guide Richard, we went for a tour of his village.

We learned that the majority of people who live there are living off welfare and have no desire to obtain a job or do better for themselves. They receive money for basically doing nothing. There is a loophole in the welfare law that if over 80% of a town are on welfare, there is no limit to when your welfare expires.

Overall it was a very enlightening trip, but some of us found it quite depressing. One thing Steve noticed back at the airport was a newspaper clipping of their school's basketball team. Our guide mentioned that they fly all over the state to play basketball. The team racks up a $30k a year air bill. All on the governments budget.

Fort Yukon is 8 miles north of the Artic Circle. We received a certificate upon our return to Fairbanks that stated we crossed this latitude line.

After the flight home, we came back to the hotel. Steve picked up a shirt to commemorate our flight. When we returned to the hotel, something happened to the format of the memory stick in the digital camera, it appears that we lost all the photos up to this point. Neither of us if very happy about this. Hopefully the video is ok.

We arrived back at the hotel about midnight. It was still light out. You could not tell the difference between the midnight and noon.