Tammy and Steve's Alaska Adventure!: Fairbanks Weekend (Part 1)

Hi, Everyone:

We're coming off of an exciting and cool weekend here in Alaska. Given the 3-day weekend, which allowed both of us to have an extra day off work, we decided to go on a road trip up to Fairbanks. Now it may seem nuts to go to Fairbanks in the winter, but we wanted to try and see the Northern Lights at the Chena Hot Springs up there. We also thought it would be a great way to visit Justice Winfree and the Fairbanks Alaska Supreme Court clerks. So we packed our bags, borrowed a car (ours wouldn't do so well in the extreme cold), and started to drive.

The theme for the weekend was as follows: (see the temperature on the dashboard)

Now, to avoid deceiving you, we need to be clear. The temperature was not -22 degrees. No; that's just as low as the thermometer in the car would report. The temperature was actually much lower. We believe it got down to about -40 degrees at night. This raises whole new concerns for us about tires deflating, liquids and engines freezing, etc. And once your tires deflate, you have to fill them with air. But the metal on the air hose freezes, so you have to warm it up using your car exhaust:

It certainly made for an interesting weekend. We finally feel like we've experienced the true Alaska winter!

The drive to Fairbanks (which takes about 7 hours) was gorgeous. We passed through Denali State and National parks. On the way, we watched a tow truck pull a semi out of a ditch. It was quite exciting, but slowed down our trip a bit.

We then met up with Gabe, one of Steve's co-clerks on the court. Gabe showed us around town, including the Fairbanks Curling Club and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. He also took us to the local brewery, called Silver Gulch. It had some really interesting and unique beers, including a barely wine that Tammy really enjoyed called "Happy Hippie."

The next morning we woke up and drove to Justice Winfree's cabin. On the way, we passed by North Pole, Alaska, which of course warranted a stop and some pictures.

Ice carving is HUGE in Fairbanks (mostly because these things have no chance of melting in these winter temperatures!)

All of the light poles look like candy canes.

The north pole.

Reindeer! Which was actually pretty depressing to see since they're locked up in this cage, in the extreme cold, with not much to do. They definitely looked pretty bored.

Finally, we made it out to Justice Winfree's cabin. We had both been very excited about this opportunity, because this was going to be our first snowmachine experience. In Alaska, they like to call them snowmachines . . . most people know them as "snowmobiles."

Anyway, we got on them and began zipping around the frozen lake. Then we got an amazing tour/lesson from Jimmy, who took us onto a nearby frozen river.

He also showed us these awesome chunks of ice that had come loose from the first freeze, been pushed down the river, and then refroze. It made for a pretty good picture for Tammy, Steve, and Gabe: