Hello again!
Welcome to Part 2 of our Fairbanks installation. After snowmachining at the cabin, and eating a delicious lunch prepared by Justice Winfree and his wife (thanks!), we drove over to Chena Hot Springs.
Chena is located approx. 60 miles east of Fairbanks, and is known worldwide as one of the best places to go to see the Northern Lights. It's also a resort, filled with tons of activities including hanging out in the hot spring pools, checking out an ice museum, a nice restaurant, and lots of snow activities (dog mushing, snowmachining, etc.).
The hotel offers a wakeup service for people to see the Northern Lights. Because the rooms don't have phones in them, an attendant will run around the halls banging on doors screaming "Aurora" if the lights are out. It's a lot like a college prank, but we pay for the experience.
Anyway, we signed up for the wake-up service and headed into the ice museum. This is basically a giant building filled with massive ice sculptures. The sculptures include a full hotel, with 4 working rooms. Only 26 couples have stayed and made it through the night, but the rooms include massive amounts of caribou hides. It also costs about $600/night to stay there.
The building is kept at 20 degrees. This was about 50 degrees warmer than the temperature outside. We found it kind of ironic that we were going into the ice museum to warm up.
The sculptures include a full working chess set:
Jousters. Note that the jouster on the left is standing up on the horse. This is about 300 lbs. of ice being supported on the legs alone.
An igloo:
And a full-scale bar, including drinks served out of glasses made of ice.
They used to serve coca-cola to the kids out of the bar, but the drinks kept freezing into the ice. So they switched to appletinis (not for kids), and only serve those. The booze doesn't freeze!
After hanging out in the ice museum, we headed into the hot springs. Because we didn't want to damage the camera, we don't have any pictures. But just imagine a GIANT outdoor pool, surrounded by rocks, really really warm, surrounded by a dense fog (because the heat from the water creates smoke). With it being -30 degrees outside, our heads were cold despite our bodies being warm. Within minutes our glasses had frozen, and our hair had turned gray from the fog rising off the water, and then freezing onto our hair. We basically looked like we had aged 30 years.
We spent about 30 minutes in the hot springs, and then headed back to our room to relax and fall asleep. At about 12:30, the "aurora" guy came running through the halls, so we ran outside.
Our definition of Northern Lights clearly is different than theirs. We were expecting the colorful lights dancing and jumping in the air. But the "aurora" guy's yelling was spurred by the appearance of a slightly-tinged green cloud hovering above the mountain. We tried to get a picture, but there wasn't any real color or light, so it wouldn't catch.
We've been told that this year is a fairly light year for solar activity, so that may be the best we get. We're going to keep trying around the Anchorage area based on a "aurora alert" one of Steve's co-clerks set up. If we see them, we'll make sure to post pictures. In the meantime, we aren't crossing it off the list just yet.
Although we didn't get to see the lights, the trip was well worth it and tons of fun. We got to hang out with great company, experience true Alaska winter temperature, snow machine, hang out in hot springs, and see some amazing views on the way home:
That's all for now! We have tons of exciting activities the next few weeks, including Fur Rondy (the beginning of the Iditarod) in late-February. Stay tuned!
(Hi, Neha! Miss you!)
No comments:
Post a Comment