Sun, Aug 23: On the Road to Fairbanks

It is a little over cast this morning as we leave our little hide away about 50 miles south of Fairbanks. During the night another rig pulled in, but we never spoke to the couple before leaving.
The drive is uneventful and we get to Fairbanks about 11:30 AM. We check into River's Edge Campground after checking out the only other campground with full hook ups. Finally, we get set up after moving to a second site. The first one was really cramped, especially since we will probably be here all week. Last night Dick made contact with Dell Service and we should have Carolyn’s computer up and running by Friday if all goes well!


The rig and the car are covered in dirt and dust inside and out. Carolyn tackles the inside of the rig and Dick works on the outside of the rig and under the hood of the Explorer. It is getting harder and harder to get the drive shaft reconnected when it is unhooked and we want to drive it. There is probably road debris in the mechanism. The whole engine block has a half-inch of dust on it! Several hours later and a roll of paper towels sacrificed to the dust monster, we have a fairly clean “home” and the Explorer seems happier!


We then spend some time looking through all our stuff on things to do in Fairbanks. First on the list, without too much thinking, we elect for an early dinner at the all you can eat Salmon Bake at Pioneer Park. About 6PM, we head over to the Park. It turned cold and started raining about 4:30PM so we will eat inside, but we go to all the stations in the outside setting. Lets see, at the check in station, we are given a big fish shaped platter and go first to the sides station for salads, maybe eight different ones with baked beans and hot bread, of course. Next is the BBQ pit and carving station

where we are given a huge slice of prime rib and a huge piece of grilled salmon. That is topped off with pieces of deep fried Halibut and Cod! Dick gets our drinks and we go into the warm dinning room and eat like crazy. There is cake and coffee if we are still hungry...and, of course, we are! Heck we have just completed our trek to Alaska!

The food isn’t gourmet, but it is good and worth what we paid. After we eat we walk around since the rain has just about stopped. There are many pieces of equipment around the grounds that were used during the gold rush days and early mining period.Probably the most interesting is a steam shovel that was used to dig the Panama Canal and then brought north to Fairbanks to work the gold fields.
We drive around town after we leave because Dick wants to check out two places he found in the phone book to possibly get the front end of the rig checked out. He wants to be there when they open to hopefully get an appointment early in the week. Then it is home and a quiet evening.