Alaska Day 1

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Alaska Day 1

Arrived in Fairbanks late last night, around 11:00 am local time (3:00 am Kansas time)
It was still very light outside which would take a little getting used to I would think.... It's a really nice smallish laid back town.

The Fairbanks Airport, looking from the rental car parking lot just before we were getting ready to head to the hotel. This is at 11:00 p.m. We were mentioning if it weren't overcast, it would probably be even brighter out.

This Moose was inside the airport; there were also stuffed polar bear, eagle, grizzly bear, a replica of an artic tour wagon, etc.

Thursday morning we walked downtown Fairbanks to go have breakfast. This was painted on the side of the building, and of course Bruce tells Allison she need to have "mom take her picture by the sign." Thanks dad! This is actually a clothing store.

We had breakfast at a little eatery downtown called "The Creperie", where they had a wide variety of really wonderfully fun crepes. It was delicious (and #2 of the restaurants to eat at on Trip Advisor).

The first touristy stop was the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center. It was pretty much just that...a visitors center, but also a museum of the cultural history of Fairbanks and Alaska as a whole.

We attended a live cultural performance by a group of high school and college age students who shared information about their native Alaska culture. It was interesting, and nice to see young people interested in their culture and history.

They did a dance where they actually had people from the audience come up and dance....and Bruce WENT UP!

An antler arch that we saw as we were walking back towards our hotel/car. Allison wouldn't let us take a picture of her.

This is a photo of the Chena River which is just across the street basically from our hotel. I like the little white church building.

A statue/fountain we walked by. It has statues of native peoples.

A welcome sign near our hotel.

This is the front of our hotel. I am loving the lovely live flowers. When we arrived late Wednesday night, I could actually smell the fragrance from them as we were walking in. It was nice.

We went to Pioneer Park, which is a free area to go that celebrates the pioneer history and settlement in Alaska. There is a collection of old cabins and buildings, railroad, old ferry boat, art center, airplane museum, playground, etc.

I read somewhere ahead of time that there are a lot of totem poles in Alaska, part of the cultural crafts. I was drawn to this one for some reason. I think the eyes; as I approached it closer, I'm not a fan of the "thing" on top, but I still like the rest of it.

A moose swing set.

And a train play equipment for the little people

We ended up eating dinner tonight at Big Daddy's BBQ. Allison's and Bruce's dinner was really good they said. Mine was meh. It was okay but not as good as theirs sounds.