We arrived in Fairbanks ready to explore, restock our larder, clean up the camper and do a massive amount of laundry.
Lori’s Laundry Rant: It turns out the Laundry is Big Business. Probably more so for us as we tend to do laundry about every 3 weeks and this usually involves 6-8 regular size laundry basket loads. $$ Breakdown to date: Jasper $60 Canadian but a fancy coffee bar experience is included, Yellowknife $35 (dated machines, but everything worked the way you thought it should), Dawson City $30 (all temperatures = very cold, a slice of life experience). Fairbanks is by far the most expensive we have experienced but, Fairbanks Laundry is new, shiny and clean. The trick here is you have to buy a membership card, which, when you use a credit/debit card you have to add $10 increments even though the laundry machines run in odd amounts which leaves people to scream that they are being ripped off (Dan) because you are always going to be left with $$s on a card that can’t be used for anything else. It also tends to keep out the gritty,vagrant element that haunts other laundromat establishments in this town. Yes, we checked those out.
Turns out you can add cash to the card in $1.00 increments. Slow down, breath, smile and ask. The nice folks even sorted out a situation we had with a machine and moved our unclean laundry to another machine happily. Such great service. The machines are new and huge—9 times the size of a regular home size machine. No coffee bar but there is free WiFi. We got our laundry done in record time. We then ordered lunch from the next door pizza restaurant, The Hungry Robot—portobello cap mushroom pizzas! Novel and yummy. Thanks, Fairbanks.
We headed downtown to check out the Antler Arch, Visitors Center and walk around to get the feel for the town. The history here is rich and full of a mix of native life, wildlife, and gold mining stories. We camped at Pioneer Park, a historic re-creation of old Fairbanks during the gold rush days. The park shops are housed in small pioneer cabins that have been moved and restored. There is also a sort-of-restored steam ship, an old rail car, a museum and art gallery, and the home of the Salmon Bake restaurant. There is also a functioning rail road that runs around the park complete with engineer, an choo-choo whistle and a tour guide; which was blissfully silent for most of our visit due to a maintenance snafu. The park is kind of kitschy but also refreshingly is a real community that cares about the retelling of the past. We thoroughly enjoyed having Pioneer Park as our camper home base during our Fairbanks time.
One of the nicer places we visited in Fairbanks was Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge, an old dairy farm that has been preserved as migratory bird refuge with nice hiking paths throughout. After soaking up that beautiful hike, we longed to get back out in the bush and away from the gritty parts of city life. So we headed out Chena Hot Springs Road to hike and camp for a few days. We were rewarded with great hiking up to granite tors and domes, beautiful campsites along fishing ponds, and a visit from Momma Moose on our first night.
After a hiking about 6 miles on the Upper Chena Dome trail where we got to eat our fill of wild blueberries, we toured the Aurora Ice Museum and Chena Hot Springs. We thoroughly enjoyed our hand carved ice martini glasses (if not the contents-an appletini concoction that is oddly reminiscent of a green apple jolly rancher candy).
After another great night at 48-mile Pond, we decided to hike the lower part of the Chena Dome trail. There were lots of mosquitoes by the Chena River, but once we gained a few hundred feet of elevation, we were able to enjoy the boreal forest again. Just before we reached our goal of three miles up the trail, we broke out of the forest and into the tundra. Beautiful.
And then… Lori took a hard header/left knee crash. Oh no!
It was bad. After a minute of recovery to overcome the nausea and acute pain, we headed down. You know, “Shake it off. You’ll feel better if you walk!” :). And so she did. A real trooper with some sore days ahead.
We returned to Fairbanks for a day of urban experiences—riding our bikes to the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North and a visit to the Fairbanks Farmer’s Market, while Maddie caught up on her rest after several days of hiking. The Museum is the true highlight of our time here. Architecturally stunning, this museum covers so much without appearing to try to hard—social and environmental history as well as native and modern art. The exhibits are well curated. There is something for everyone here.
And now, it is time to head South!
