March 9-10 2020


March 9 – March 10, 2020

Off to Another Grand Tour

We are once again taking our two-month driving tour of western continental Europe.  This one will have some interesting twists and turns, many of which we know, and we’re sure a few that we don’t.
The elephant on this tour is the newest corona virus which causes a disease called covid-19.  When we read this years from now we may have forgotten the world-wide concern about this pandemic.  It began in China and has now spread through most of the countries on the planet.  About 2% of those who become sick will die.  Countries are now being proactive and closing large congregations of people including sports events, concerts and schools.  Will that color this trip?  Yes.  Will it spoil the trip?  We hope not.  After our first night in Paris we notice fewer people, easier access to restaurants and some wearing masks in public.

We will do what we need to do to be safe—wash hands, sanitize surfaces, cover coughs and sneezes, keep distance from those around you and run from sneezing and coughing people.  It is harder on the elderly, (us) but we feel we are in good health and hopefully on the lower end of the vulnerable in our age group.  We’ll see.

The trip from home was long but easy.  We had a 4:00 am wake up at home, a 6:30 Uber to the airport and a 9:15 flight on American Airlines to Chicago.  We spent a long 6 hours in the lounge at O’Hare but they had a nice assortment of complimentary food and beverages along with relaxing work and reading spaces. Not so bad.  Our 5:15 flight to Madrid arrived at 7:30 with zero sleep for John and some dozing for Mary.  John did collect 2 Oscar movies (Bombshell and Judy) so he had that going. 

We breezed through passport control and after a pat down (those damned metal knees) the agent asked John if his English was understandable?  John said “si.”  A 9:00 am flight to Paris, where we got breakfast number 2, was on time and easy.  We had arranged a car from the airport (Orly) and he arrived just as we had the phone out to call him.  There was an ATM right next to the baggage collection area so we could actually pay the driver.  It was quite a surprise that no one checked our baggage and no customs.

Our room was ready when we got to our hotel.  Our hostess told us that they had been getting a lot of cancelations.  She went through the list of neighborhood restaurants and we picked out a couple for our quick 46 hour stay in Paris.  Nap time.  We set our watch alarms for 3:00 pm and crashed for a quick 2 hour refresher.  Europe is 6 hours ahead of home (they haven’t changed to DST yet) so we had a very long 28 hour day.  We’ll sleep well tonight.

We did a 4:00 – 6:00 walk down memory lane as we revisited our last trip to Paris now 10 years in the past.  We still recognized our favorite patisserie and our hotel from that trip.  We reconstructed the view of the Eiffel Tower from the Pont Neuf for Dave and Mary, our travel companions from way back then.  We had a leisurely walk along the Seine on the right bank past the Louvre and down to the Tulleries.  We crossed over the Royal Bridge and worked our way back to the Hotel. It’s cloudy and chilly but not overcrowded and altogether pleasant. 

Pre-planning for this trip has had it’s share of angst with potential travel bans in effect.  One stroll down Boulevard St. Germaine and all was right with the world.  That was transformative for our attitudes.
We took a quick rest and walked down the street and around the corner to the café Varennes.  We split a nice Bordeaux and John had the 7-hour leg of lamb and Mary was happy with a huge terrine of onion soup and a pile of cheese and bread. 
Off to bed for the sleep of baby angels.
New today:  Biden grabs a big lead over Bernie and virus, virus virus.

July 2, 2018


Adios Alaska


Our string of nice days continues—we now have two in a row.  We have a 12:50 flight home so a lazy morning.  The hotel breakfast area is packed but we manage to do the waffle and scrambled egg deal.  We have signed up for the 10:15 shuttle but switch to the 9:45 because we’re bored and packed.

The Delta desk isn’t open when we try to check in but they showed up a few minutes later. We ask for directions to the Delta Lounge and are told that they had a working arrangement with the Air Alaska club, but they have now discontinued the relationship. So you’re telling us there is no lounge.  Bummer!

Mary survived the flight here without an early morning shot of booze so there is improvement. But since it is now 10:30 a Bloody Mary might be in order. We find Lynette the bartender who makes a mean bloody, tells us fishing stories with pictures, shares recipes and generally helps us pass the time.

The details of the rest of the story are that the plane left a few minutes early, got to MSP a few minutes early, and we were Ubered home with a load in the wash shortly after 10:00 central time.  Why is it hot and dark here? We now have a sense of Alaska, made some new friends and will have these memories for the rest of our lives.  We’re happy we went and happy to be home.


The texture of our trip home was out the window.  The pilots were beside themselves with a constant play by play pointing out the various landmarks of the St. Elias, Wrangell and Chugach ranges. They said this was the best day ever to see the sights of Alaska.  We’ll finish this edition of the blog with airplane pictures.

July 1, 2018


So This Is What Alaska Looks Like


That is Mary’s line this morning as we stick our heads out on a perfect mountain morning.  The sun is well up at 6:30 when we crawl out and is shimmering off Summit Lake.  The temperature is probably in the low 50s with promise of warmth to come.  We have been mired in clouds and fog with only peeks of sun for so long that this, our last full day of the trip, is when we get the full Monty.  Better late than never.

Breakfast is included with the cabin and the restaurant is full service only for guests.  Mary gets a very nice omelet and John has the eggs, reindeer sausage and home fries.  We meet Marty, the owner, this morning as he is hosting in the dining room.

He was born in New Ulm MN but has had this lodge for 30 years.  He is ready to retire and has two daughters (Meagan from yesterday’s check-in is one of them) ready and willing to take over with their husbands and little kids. They grew up in the business and want the same experience for their kids. Outside of cabins instead of Lodge, this is Manhattan Beach Lodge all over again.  Marty’s 30 years in the business is pretty darn close to when we started 28 years ago.  His dining room furniture is Old Hickory and he had his cabin furniture made by a company in Nisswa, MN.  Just so happens it is the same company, run by our pals Matt and Jeff, that made our lodge furniture.  Small world.  We could have had long conversations about the business but he was working and we weren’t.  He kept coming over to the table whenever he had a minute.

This is a top ten Alaska day.  We only have to get back to Anchorage to turn in the car and check in at our airport hotel, so we have time to dawdle for a while.  We walk around the property for a while and spend a few minutes on the lake shore.  The temps are low enough that the mosquitoes are staying in bed which is an additional treat.  There are a bunch of employees who live on site and they are all scurrying around ready to tidy up cabins as the sluggish guests get ready to leave.  They’re all young folks who clean, bartend, cook, wash dishes and wait tables as needed.  And, of course, there are a couple Uzbeks and Czechs among the group.  Thanks to tour guide Marc who talked us out of last night in Soldotna and forced us to find this place.

Mary hops behind the wheel this morning.  We are giddy about our abundance of gas as we can clearly get to Girdwood and maybe Anchorage on our lawn mower allocation. The drive through the mountains on the Kenai Peninsula and the along the Turnagain Arm is breathtaking.  Everywhere we look there are rivers, lakes, waterfalls and snowcapped mountains without low hanging clouds.  The highway is buzzing this morning with people heading both ways to enjoy the upcoming holiday week.  There is a lineup at the gas station in Girdwood but we decide to stop to grab a few gallons and then will top off at the Costco in Anchorage.

Since this is such a great day we decide to stop at Potters Marsh where we braved the cold and high winds a couple weeks ago.  We get out onto the boardwalk through the wetlands and stop at an outlet to the Turnagain.  Lo and behold there is a school of salmon almost tight underneath us sort of holding in place.  There is a monster on the upstream side with slightly smaller ones behind and the smallest in the rear.  Whenever the big boy moves all of the smaller ones scatter and get back into the right pecking order.  On our last Alaska day we have seen our first swimming salmon.  Amen brothers and sisters.

We are full of ourselves walking back to the other end of the boardwalk when Mary says, “stop.” Right is front of us is a Mama moose checking us out from 30 feet away.  Deciding that we were not friend or food she ducked back into the woods and left us with our final wildlife experience of the trip.  It is now Moose 6, and Whales 6 with a remarkable comeback at the last minute by the moose.

We continue to kill time in Anchorage, get gassed up at Costco and split a Schlotzky.  Our phones are suddenly non-functional which we later found was a limitation of our roaming capabilities on the ATT network in Alaska.  We are GPS-less.  We have to find the airport and our airport hotel without our security blanket.  The airport is pretty easy but we dance around in circles trying to figure out how to get to the hotel we can see from the highway.  We finally arrive, unload our 3-week’s worth of mess and make arrangements to get picked up by the shuttle when we return the car.

We can walk to dinner at the Lakefront Inn, right on Lake Hood, the seaplane base at the airport.  They have a very big patio with great lake views and on this most beautiful night they are absolutely slammed.  We are seated inside where a real Alaskan is playing the guitar and singing in the first of several dining rooms.  It takes 15 minutes for us to be acknowledged and finally the Assistant F&B director gets us a beer.  We place our food order at the same time in hopes of jumping the line a little. The beers and food arrive pretty promptly but Mary asks for mustard from the food runner and it all goes downhill from there.  John is eating his jalapeno chicken sandwich while Mary is waiting for her mustard.  A harried waiter shows up after another ten minutes apologizing for being tied up and Mary asks again for mustard.  Ten minutes later Mary has taken a couple bites of her sandwich with no mustard and we get the F&B manager again.  She says she will give us a credit and get us the check.  There is a $5 credit on the bill which Mary explains nicely is unacceptable.  Reluctantly the Mgr. takes off Mary’s food and the bill is finally settled. The restaurant in this case has screwed up at least three times on one table, the food is uneaten and they want to get cheap about it.  Say you’re sorry, comp the check (which might cost ten bucks in food cost) and move along.  Sheesh.

It is a nice walk back to the hotel, bad restaurant experience is in the rear view mirror and we won’t let it spoil this great day.

Last day conversation: We have immersed ourselves in the business of Alaska to have a sense of the place, a knowledge of the geography and a friendship with a few of the people.  What more can you ask from travel.

June 30, 2018


Beginning of the End


It is an early wake-up this morning.  Like any morning that the alarm is set early we both wake up every hour during the night so as not to oversleep.  When it finally does go off at 4:30am, the getting up is merely a formality since we have been laying awake waiting for our cue.  he car needs to be in the ferry boarding line at 6:00 for our trip across Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier.  We make some coffee in the room and John grabs a couple back-ups from the breakfast room downstairs.  Breakfast doesn’t start until 6:00 but they have coffee, rolls and cereal out for the ferry folks.

The ferry is about 2 minutes from our hotel and the line-up is an exercise in hurry-up-and-wait.  We’re near the front of the line but the loading managers have a different plan.  All of the big vehicles, buses, RVs and camper trucks are loaded first and we make it aboard at 7:20.  An hour and twenty minutes of our lives we will never get back.  The on-board seating is pretty lush, we have all of our electronic devices and our tuna Subway sub—life is good.

The weather is of course overcast with heavy fog as we roll out of Valdez Harbor.  It seems to us that some other ship had a problem here once but we make it out OK.  If there is some question of the score in the large animal race, it was 4 whales to 4 moose until Mary saw the moose on the road 2 days ago pulling them ahead 5-4.  We start getting a break in the weather about halfway across the sound and there is a whale sighting off the starboard side.  Sure enough there are a couple orcas playing about 100 yards out making the updated score Whales 6, Moose 5 in an unexpected comeback.  Only a day and a half for the moose to make a move.

We reach Whittier on schedule at 1:15 and get off fairly fast to make the 2:00 tunnel opening with
ease. Our car says we have about 50 miles worth of fuel left and we’re pretty sure there is gas in Portage, so we move quickly to the tunnel line. There is no gas in Portage, but we are pretty sure there is gas at the Hope junction.  Nope.  Then at the Sterling Highway.  Nope.  Then at Moose Pass.  Nope.  By now we are 15 miles past our lodging for the night, we have 10 miles worth of fuel left and 20 miles left to Seward with no phone reception.  We later learn that there is no gas on the Seward Highway, packed with cars, from Girdwood to Seward, a distance of about 70 miles.  Business opportunity???

The semi-happy ending is that we stop at the Fudge shop in Moose Pass for gas directions and the fellow there says he has a couple gallons in a can for his lawn mower that he would be willing to part with. Hallelujah!  We now have enough gas to get to our lodge for tonight and back to Girdwood tomorrow. We’re in such a tizzy about the gas that we aren’t enjoying a beautiful day to the fullest.

Our lodging for tonight is the Summit Lake Lodge right on the Seward Highway.  These folks have 16 cabins and 6 motel rooms on a very pretty lake tucked in the middle of nowhere.  There is a full service restaurant and bar with a pizza-ice cream-espresso shack off to one side.  Meagan, with ancestral ties to Minnesota checks us in.  Our cabin is beautifully updated with all the amenities.  It all looks very familiar with the pine log furniture and woodsy décor.

We get a couple free drinks for happy hour in the bar with chatty Kendall and a fantastic dinner with server Tom.  John has a ribeye with horseradish-demi glaze, deep fried brussels sprouts and garlic mashed.  Mary has a parmesan crusted halibut served over a pasta with cream sauce and we gulp it all down with a Joel Gott Cabernet.  Very civilized.  Very familiar.

It continues to be a beautiful evening for the walk back to our cabin and we would love to see a sky full of stars if the sun wasn’t still out at 11:00 pm.

Todays Observation: Valdez is the terminus of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with huge storage tanks on the hillside across the harbor from the town.  In the fog this morning we passed the reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground and could see it happening in pre-GPS days.

June 29, 2018


Wrangell – St. Elias


Host Eric is making breakfast this morning when we step out of our room.  The bed was too soft for Mary and the hot water ran out during her shower so she has a different view of the stay than her partner.  The cast of characters gathers around the kitchen bar with coffee watching Eric work.  One couple is from College Station, Texas, another from Switzerland, a fellow who works for the National Park System, and a woman who works in counselling in the Native American community.  Quite the diverse group.  John talks business with Eric for a half hour before the rest of the troops arrive and there is always a connection between fellow inn keepers.  Breakfast is fresh fruit, eggs with jalapenos and sausage and waffles and the whole gang eats around a community table.  It is sort of like our B&B in Girdwood where the power went out.  Come to think of it, our B&B experiences on this trip have had their share of problems.  We chat with Eric on the font porch on our way out until the mosquitoes drive us to the car.  Nice people make all the difference in this business.

Our day today will be spent driving the last 120 miles to Valdez where we will catch the early morning ferry back to Whittier tomorrow.  Our mission during that drive will be to get acquainted with Wrangell – St. Elias National Park.  This is a good time to review the issues of time and space for traveling in Alaska.  We all know Alaska is the largest of the states.  If Alaska were cut in half it would be the two largest states.  Denali N.P. is a little smaller than Massachusetts.  Wrangell – St. Elias is larger than Denali and is in fact the largest of our national parks.  It is about the size of Switzerland except W-St.E has higher mountains.  Nine of the 13 highest mountains in North America are in the St. Elias range ranging from 16,000 to over 19,000 feet.  The Wrangell Mountains are volcanic and range from 12,000 to 16,000 feet.  There is a snow field in the park the size of Rhode Island where the snow is 1,000 feet deep.  You get the idea.

You have to be serious to get involved with Wrangell St. Elias.  There is a gravel road that goes about 50 miles into the park and some other gravel roads that skirt it, but outside of that it is backpacks, tents and mountain climbing gear.  There are no buses into the park, no guided ranger tours and certainly no hand holding.  The park is there if you want it, but you had better be prepared. 

We aren’t but we are curious.  Our first stop is at the Wrangell-St. Elias visitor center on the Richardson Highway which is managed by the National Park Service.  There is a scale model of the park, numerous displays of the flora and fauna and a pretty good movie with tons of aerial shots of the mountains and glaciers. We chat with the ranger and she suggests that for some easy sightseeing we take the 33 mile road from the Richardson Highway into Chitina at the edge of the park.  There is a ranger station there and she thought they might have some suggestions in the area.

Chitina is the beginning of the gravel road that ends in McCarthy and Kennicut, the two old mining towns that still sort of exist in the interior of the park.  We drive a short distance on the gravel to get a feel for the terrain but have no interest in going further.  Vicky, the Chitina ranger gives us a couple other suggestions for some interesting local sights.  Her boss called her this morning to let her know that the Superintendent will be visiting her today and she had better have all the right posters hung and she should get some locals to stop by so she looks busy.  We signed the guest book to help justify her existence.

There is a short drive south of town with some water and mountain views, and then a return to have lunch at the Chitina Hotel.  This is an old building right out of the gold rush days.  There are a couple locals and a couple other nosy folks like us.  Mary had a $9 grilled cheese sandwich with two slices of cheddar on white and John had the French dip with 2 oz. of shoe leather on a hot dog bun for $15.   If you don’t like the food or prices go outside and see where else you can eat.

After lunch we go past the Chitina airport about five miles out of town and following our ranger’s instructions work our way down a moose trail to the edge of the Copper River.  Here are 4 or 5 fish wheels with one kind-of operational.  These wheels are rotated by the current of the river and scoops dip into the water where they will grab any fish passing upstream and deposit them into a basket.  When the salmon are running this thing is a fishing monster.  Not today though—no fish.  On our way back to the main highway we pass a cemetery with all of the graves individually fenced in.  I guess you don’t want the bears digging up Aunt Mabel.


We continue to travel south through the Thompson Pass that is frequently closed in the winter.  The pass gets 900 inches of snow a year which is a good reason for an occasional shut-down.  As we continue downhill our next stop is the salmon hatchery about 6 miles north of Valdez on the Copper River.  Our host Cynthia from last night said this is a great place to watch the salmon swimming upstream and the bears romping around at the buffet.  No fish and therefore no bears.  We are still too early for the next run of salmon that will be the silvers in another couple weeks.  Another viewing area is at the Forest Service Station closer to Valdez but the same thing is true there.  A local who had stopped by there to see if the fish had started yet showed us a video on his phone from last year where the fish are literally stacked on top of each other in the water.  We’ll have to come back next month.

Our hotel is the Best Western on the Harbor in Valdez.  It is pretty dumpy but so is Valdez so it fits right in.  Mary figures out how to order a Subway on line for the ferry tomorrow which is our excuse to get out for a half hour walk.  The town is loaded with RVs, vans, motorcycles and every manner of mobile camper, most of whom will probably be on tomorrow’s ferry.  We dare to have dinner at the hotel restaurant and it turns out OK.  John has a salmon roasted in cedar paper (?) with a very good rice pilaf and a cup of chowder.  Mary has the chowder and a Caesar salad.  She is still a cheap date.

The alarms are set for 4:30 am.  We need to be lined up at the ferry terminal at 6:00 am so it is early to bed.

Today’s Most Useful Line: The mosquitoes are so thick you could swing a pint jar and catch a quart of them.

June 28, 2018


Windshield Time


Today is the longest driving day of our entire trip.  Our mission is to spend the next two days driving the 360 miles from Fairbanks to Valdez in order to catch the Saturday morning ferry back to Whittier and the Kenai Peninsula.  We are doing most of the trip today going the 240 miles to Glenallen on the south bound Richardson Highway.

The breakfast staff has not improved their performance over yesterday but would we complain?  Never! The coffee is burned and mostly empty (that sort of goes together) but we have more in our room and we get enough to eat.  We’re packed and ready to leave at the crack of 10:00 which leaves us plenty of time for our four-hour drive.

We make a quick stop in North Pole to mail the boys a postcard.  Santa has left that household, but it’s still fun.  As they say, once you stop believing in Santa you get socks for Christmas.  This two-day drive is all about the scenery.  We will start looking at the Alaska Range ahead of us and later in the trip, shift to the Wrangell-St. Elias Range.  We are surrounded by raging glacial rivers and in and out of boreal forests and shaky black spruce permafrost.  The next stop is Delta Junction, the meeting of the Richardson Highway and the 1422 mile Alaska Highway that starts way down in British Columbia.  John gets a chicken club sandwich at the local IGA store in town and Mary brought leftovers from last night’s dinner.  We’ll find a scenic place for a picnic further down the road.  We drive 100 feet on the Alaska highway so we can say we drove to the end of it.

For the first time on the trip Mary is behind the wheel.  John gets to gawk at all the scenery and is surprised that this is what Alaska looks like instead of the butt end of a Winnebago.  He points to a scenic turnoff and tells Mary that we should check it out and as we pull in Mary says, “we might even see a moose,” as she points to the moose about 30 feet away from us.  The moose chomping on the shrubbery is our cue to dig out our fancy lunch to enjoy with our chili cheese Fritos and bottles water.

The Richardson Highway parallels the Trans-Alaska pipeline all the way to Valdez.  It pops in and out of the scenery, sometimes gone for many miles before it appears again.  It will also switch sides of the road depending on the topography and where the water is flowing.  It seems unobtrusive to us but we can’t speak for the caribou.  We are also joined by the Gulkana River.  This is one of the major tributaries of the Copper River, the 10th longest river in the U.S.  The Copper is known for its great salmon that will venture as much as 300 miles upstream to spawn.  The word is that the sockeye take on the Copper is down this year and the pinks won’t be running for another month.  We still haven’t seen a salmon that wasn’t on a plate.

John takes over the driving again as we finish our drive into Glennallen.  Our lodging for tonight is the Glennallen Rustic B&B Resort.  That is a lot of words to make sure you know what you are getting into. The place is an old house that the owners (Cynthia and Eric) converted into a B&B with 6 rooms and are still continuing the process as they are building another structure deeper into the property.  We get the “Fancy” room which has the plastic chandelier and the clawfoot tub.  No TV and sketchy Wi-Fi but friendly hosts make up for a lot of sins.

We take a drive through town and then out to Simpson Overlook for a great view of the Copper River Valley and on to the mountains beyond.  This is gorgeous country and the isolation makes it
better or worse depending on your point of view.  Cynthia has suggested a nice restaurant but it is 17 miles down the road and a 34 mile round trip doesn’t sound enticing.  We opt for the Mexican joint in town (they refer to themselves as “Latin”) against our better judgement.  We both get chimichangas, John beef and Mary chicken.  We should have driven the 34 miles.  Hands down, the worst Mexican (Latin) food since Pancho Villa cooked a cat.

This trip is all about the scenery so even if we spend it in the car we are still accomplishing our number one goal.  Off to bed.

Today’s Observation:  When you look down a rural Alaskan driveway there is always a pick-up truck and either a bobcat or backhoe.  There is also probably a 40-year-old plane at the airport.

June 27,2018


Free in Fairbanks

We have absolutely nothing on our agenda today. This was a day set aside to poke around in Fairbanks and get a sense of the city.  We have been whining so much about the lack of professionalism in our hospitality dealings that we won’t go into our breakfast experience.  It perhaps only signifies that the trend for chain hotels to serve breakfast when they have no food service expertise on site is a good intention with predictable results.  That isn’t whining is it?

There is a huge military presence in Fairbanks with Army Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force base south of the city.  Out internet investigation tells us that Fort Wainwright is a great place to spend an hour or two in the visitor center and nosing around.  When we hit the visitor center, a prefab little office building outside the main gate, the soldier in charge has no idea what we are talking about.  She says this is the only visitor center and is designed to present your credentials for official visits.  We tell her that touring must be available because we read it on the internet, and she started to reach for her sidearm.  Not really but she was losing patience with us so we got out of there.

Mary remembered that we saw a promo for a farmer’s market and that is our next stop.  It is a pretty morning with bright blue skies and temps approaching the 70s.  Like the market in Anchorage produce is not the big deal here.  There are a lot of crafty things, canned goods, bakery items and food stands.  The produce that is here consists mostly of the early spring items like radishes and green onions, but what’s here is perfect.  Everyone is in a good mood and we have fun chatting with some of the vendors.

We considered a stop just south of Fairbanks at North Pole, Alaska tomorrow but since that will be a long driving day we opted to do it today.  These folks have their tourist aptitude set on high.  The street light poles are all candy canes (even the McDonalds sign has a candy cane post), streets have names like Santa Claus Lane and Holly Road, the Catholic Church is St Nicholas and the post office is three times as large as it should be.  We spend some time at Santa’s Village just in time to see the reindeer being fed.  When we go inside of their HUGE Christmas store it is suddenly mid-December. Bing Crosby and Johnny Mathis are singing to us as we mill among the decorated trees and check out all things Christmas.  Their new great marketing plan is a set of seasonal letters that will be mailed from here (North Pole) from Santa to whichever little tyke you choose.  You put the kid’s name and address on their list and they will get a summer letter from Santa letting them know how the summer weather is, what the elves are up to and if there are any new baby reindeer.  That will go on seasonally for as long as you are willing to keep the payments up.  Brilliant!  We spotted a little park in town and grabbed a picnic table for a lunch of restaurant leftovers where we were inundated with about 15 kids bringing their lunches and being supervised by ONE adult.

We make one more stab at military intelligence by checking in at Eielson AFB but no go there either.  It is doubtful we could have gotten into either with our Minnesota drivers licenses since the feds don’t recognize them as real ID.  Oh well, there are other places to go.

Back to Fairbanks. On the north side of town is a pretty big bird sanctuary where we stop to enjoy the day, get a few steps in and see of there are any flying critters present.  We take a little stroll around the area and see a few geese and sand hill cranes from a distance.  The Sandies are the bigger deal for us but it is hard to get a good view.

We try a collection of artist galleries that turn out to be something else.  Not to be quitters we go to Fairbank’s Pioneer Park.  This is right by our motel and pretty interesting.  They have moved a lot of the city’s original buildings (cabins) into a little village that now serve as shops and ice cream parlors, some historical presentations. They're joined by a big steamboat and railroad car and a few rides for the kiddies.  There is also a performance area where there is free entertainment every night during the summer.

We managed to fill up our Fairbanks exploration day.  When we get back to the hotel at 4:30 our room still hasn’t been made up.  There must be signs on our backs telling our hospitality brethren to mistreat us.  They do get right on it this time and we only miss a half hour of nap time.

Dinner tonight is at the Pumphouse that is a restaurant in a Pumphouse.  Imagine that.  This is an
old building along the Chena River that was used to move river water into the city.  The restaurant is huge and laid out like our final version at the Lodge.  There is a year-round inside dining room, a seasonal glassed in deck, and an outdoor deck along the river.  The inside dining room and the outdoor deck are much bigger than our version while the seasonal deck is the same. The place is packed and there are tour buses outside so this is the volume option in town.  We are seated promptly on the seasonal deck and enjoy watching the action of a busy big restaurant.  Our server seems competent if a little overwhelmed.  We get a nice bottle of Italian red, we both have a cup of the excellent seafood chowder, John has the scallops with birch syrup (local specialty) and tons of veggies and Mary has the cheese and reindeer sausage plate.  The reindeer did not come from Santa’s Village in North Pole.  They have 19 Crimes wine on their list but our server isn’t aware of the app.

We both try to read for a half hour when we get back to the hotel but it isn’t happening.

Today’s News: Justice Kennedy is resigning and let the wars begin. Just when we thought the bickering couldn’t get any worse…….