Details of our trip

[tenaya]

The lodge we stayed at is called Mt. Aurora Fairbanks Creek Lodge and it was built in 1928 as a bunkhouse and mess for miners. The couple that run the place are Steve and Brenda. Steve supervised as his sons, 13 & 14 years old did all the work to cut the building in thirds and move the building from the mine to the new sight up on a hill. It's a lot of rough planks on the inside and tin on the outside. They remodeled and placed bathrooms betweens pairs of bedrooms. It was quite warm inside, heated by hot water in pipes. The water was from their well and it tasted wonderful! Steve has some stroke like issues going on and it obviously frustrates him. Brenda takes care of the place (feeding the guests and also running it as a restaurant for special functions--there was a group of 35 Geophysicists having a dinner one night we were there) and holds down a part time job so they can have medical insurance. Brenda was near to tears when we left as she admitted the place was for sale as she needed the time to care for Steve. Apparently they're having a hard time figuring out what is wrong with him. Of interest it seems like people go out of state to have procedures; Jan at the lodge went to LA to have her hip assessed and someone we were talking to at Sea-Tac was coming back from San Diego to have a hysterectomy.

Steve said he was a true Sourdough--sour on Alaska but not enough dough to leave.

The last day we were there was Saturday and there was a Yoga weekend for about 20 ladies. They were doing their yoga class when we went down to have breakfast. There was lots of "feel your goddess energy" and "female warrior energy." The last thing on the agenda for that night involved drumming and getting wild. Having seen the Wicker Man too many times, I told Mom we needed to leave by mid-afternoon. *g* So, we went shopping instead.

The Arctic Traveler had all sort of souvenirs and a store nearby had some great carvings of walrus ivory by Inuit artists.

Thursday night should have been our last night but it snowed. The next day was wonderfully clear. In fact, from our lodge, we could see Denali (Mt. McKinley) on the horizon. The mountain is so tall (20,320 feet) that it makes it own weather and it's rare to be able to see it. This mountain is over 150 miles away but still we could see it. I'll put up some photos in photo bucket and provide the link later. So, rather than come up there again (it was a bit expensive) we extended our trip by a day so we could see another aurora. I didn't call in sick, just said something had come up and I wouldn't be in on Sunday.

The aurora for the last night was bit like the first, a big green band curved around the pole. But this one eventually developed a couple other bands and started to get active at one point but then stopped. And then at the end, it developed those hanging curtains you see in pictures. This one was only a pale green in color. Those curtain things form as if someone took a paint brush and draws a sharp curved line. Then like water colors, the curtain melts down from the line. Very cool. :)

Friday night it looked a bit like this:
http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/images2008/27mar08/LeRoy-Zimmerman1.jpg

And Wednesday night, a bit like this:

http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/images2009/22mar09/Sylvain-Serre2.jpg

ETA: I forgot to mention that when I was all kitted up to go out, you had to have something over your face or your nose and cheeks would just get too cold. So I put a scarf over my face, but that would send the humid air up to my glasses. They just didn't fog up, they were iced up on the first breath! I had to take my glasses off because it was so irritating. Luckily, the aurora is so large, it didn't matter how bad my eyesight was.

As for Fairbanks, we saw a handful of signs for businesses that were hiring. We ate twice at the Bakery, which is sort of a 40's type of dinner. They had great soup, and it's where I had reindeer sausage on my omelet. I kept ordering halibut when I was in restaurants because it is wonderful up there--nice big fillets. Our last night we ate at The Pump House, a restored pump house. It was sort of high end, and being Saturday night, it was date night, too. Still around zero, I trudged through the snow to take a picture of the frozen Chena River. As I walked back to the restaurant, a big truck pulled up and a young man got out of the driver's side and his date, wearing a skimpy green dress and heels jumped out of the passenger side and skedaddled very quickly through the snow into the restaurant! Daring in more than one way!

There was a surprising amount of crime I thought from reading the paper. It has a population of 35,000 and there was armed robberies, drug arrests and assaults each day in the paper. Maybe it was just a crime wave.

The flight home was uneventful. I did nap on the flight. One thing was I was slightly offended how some of the flight attendants and desk people talked to Mom. She was a little anxious about where her rollator would go, but rather than explain it, a few people talked to her like she was a five year old. There is no way they would treat a man that way.

At Escapade, I had attended a panel about how 'naked' we are on the net, how google and yahoo are compiling all our data from various places and this makes it easy for folks to find you. There's a place called
http://pleaserobme.com/. It just made me very twitchy about 'over-sharing' about not being home thus the infrequent updates. :(