Fairbanks, Alaska

We spent last night in the town of Tok, Alaska (population 1200).  There wasn’t much to do there, so we spent the afternoon doing laundry and washing the dirt off the van.  To quote our Lonely Planet Alaska book, “…the best thing about Tok is generally leaving Tok”.  Gee, it sounds like we didn’t miss out on too much.  This morning we continued northwest towards Fairbanks on the Alaska highway, passing by the famous Trans-Alaska pipeline on the way.  Constructing the pipeline was an engineer’s nightmare, thanks to the weather and geological conditions up here.  Parts of it are above ground, like this section that crossed a river (the l-shaped bends are for expansion/contraction during winter freezes), and in other places the pipeline goes underground, as it did for this section of road.

Last night, when Kevin was looking up Fairbanks on Trip Advisor, he noted that four of the top ten recommended restaurants were Thai restaurants.  Rounding out the top ten were a Hawaiian BBQ spot and a place called The Fudge Pot.  He gave me a serious look and said, “I think we might be moving to Fairbanks”.  We are planning to hit one of the Thai places tomorrow, but since it wasn’t raining tonight we decided to go to an all-you-can-eat salmon bake.  The bake happened to be at Pioneer Park, which one TA reviewer called “the Disneyland of Fairbanks”.  I’m sure they meant it tongue-in-cheek because it was a far cry from Disneyland.  There aren’t any rides, other than a carousel for kids and a train ride.  But it was a unique mix of restored historic buildings and museums – and best of all there was no entrance fee.

The Nenana (a national historic landmark) is a stern-wheel steamship that once brought mail and supplies to inland Alaska via the Yukon and Tenana Rivers.  It’s permanently dry-docked at the park – inside are scale models of some of the towns it used to supply.
It wasn’t raining (yet), so we enjoyed walking around and exploring the park while we waited for the salmon bake to open its doors.

Mush!

A sign near this carved wooden salmon said “Ride Salmon At Own Risk”.  Challenge accepted!

The salmon bake was worth the wait.  They grill it over a wood fire and baste it with a delicious blend of brown sugar and herbs.  Delicious!

We drove home completely stuffed, and as we pulled into the RV park we saw this contraption parked across from us.

We had to look it up online – a German company runs these Rotel (rolling hotel) tours where the group sits in the front part of the coach by day and then sleeps in cabins in the back at night (you can see all the tiny windows).  And I thought our van was cramped.