Goodbye Alaska

Well, we woke up in our warm, cozy, foam bed and did not want to get up.

But we had to. Because we had to leave by 11am.

We had done a fair amount of packing the afternoon before because we knew that we would be out late and wouldn't want to get up early. So, we woke up at pretty much the last minute and packed the rest of our stuff and cleaned up that adorable cabin. Because we didn't bring our own towels and we were checking out of the cabin and leaving the cabin towels, we didn't get to have showers... yeah, made us really feel wild in this wild place.

As we said goodbye to Jutta, we asked her to take a picture of us in front of the cabin, she quickly agreed. We could tell that she was holding the phone at a weird angle but I guess I didn't really expect  this.

She wanted us to stand next to and point at this sign that her friend sent her. Another weird camera angle...

Here is the only normal one that she took. Funny.

We grabbed coffee and had made plans to have a goodbye lunch with Eric. I am so sad that I didn't take a picture at this goodbye lunch. We went to the Chowder House and it was good. We had fun, talked, laughed and made the time go slowly because goodbyes are the worst and no one really wanted to have to say it.

But, we did.

Lonnie and I did some non-touristy things like go to a yarn store and goodwill to see if we could find any neat, cheap Alaska shirts. Then it was time to go to the airport...

This was our ever reliable rental car. Absolutely filthy. 

Of course we load the plane and then find out that there was some type of leak and had to wait about half an hour to see if it could get stopped and then wait another hour as they filed paperwork for us to take off. Luckily, the plane was really empty and Lonnie and I got to spread out and make a bigger mess. 

And we waved goodbye to Alaska. 

I would absolutely go back. Alaska is beautiful and I feel like staying in that one town did not do the entire state justice. I am so thankful for this time with Lonnie. We have no idea what the future will hold and this was a sweet time of making memories. I hope there are many more memories. 

Next time, I go to see a glacier. 

Laundromat Showers and Santa's House

So, the showers in our cabin were frozen...

In our cabin notebook, Jutta listed some places that have shower options. The first had free showers but you could only go during the open swim times... not good for us. The second option was at a laundromat and you had to pay $6. Lonnie and I decided to save a bit of money and only pay for the shower once. $6 gets you 10 minutes worth of water. Lonnie went first, I think that girl only took like a 2/3 minute shower. When she came out and told me it was my turn there was still 6 minutes left and she had clothes on. I managed to shower and get out with 58 sec left.

It was a little awkward. We were just blowdrying our hair where people are washing their clothes. But I'm glad for that shower.

I can't say I was feeling my best this day. We didn't go to sleep until 5:30am because we were watching the northern lights and Jutta wanted to meet us at 10:45. So, not much sleep. Then straight to taking showers without any food or coffee.
We went to Little Richard's Diner for breakfast and I ordered reindeer sausage. It was pretty good, and pretty greasy. Maybe not the best thing to put on the stomach but as the day progressed, I started to feel better.

Sadly, I took no pictures of the laundromat or the sausage.

The cabin we were staying in was in North Pole, Alaska. We were really excited about this. The description of North Pole on their Chamber of Commerce page says the "streets are decorated year-round with a cheerful display of holy, candy canes, lights and names that evoke the Christmas Season." I was expecting something very different than what I saw. The thing is, this place is exactly how they described it. A lot of the streets have Christmas themed names and there are light and sign poles that are candy cane striped and that is it. It is, unfortunately, not cute at all.
The big thing here is Santa's house. We went there.

 North Pole is claiming this as the largest Santa statue in the world. I haven't checked the facts to see if this is right. He's checking his list but his eyes are looking a little funky. And look at that booty.

Santa's House

This place is totally Christmas crazy. They're playing Christmas music, there is a santa here year-round (of course he was on vacation while we were there), there are ornaments, and funky little gifts. It smells like Christmas here. 

 And you can even sit in Santa's chair. 

You can also walk around their grounds and see reindeer (some of the only livestock we've seen) and there were huge pieces of ice that we believe were from ice sculptures that were melting. 

Here I am posing with these huge blocks of ice. 

When we left Santa's House, we headed out to find the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The pipeline is 800 miles long, starting in Prudhoe Bay and going all the way to the northernmost ice-free point in America, Valdez. About 420 miles of the pipeline is above the ground due to permafrost. It took only 3 years to build. Its kind of mind blowing to me. They had to make it where the oil moves freely, doesn't freeze, also the warmth of the oil doesn't affect the ground in certain areas. It was a huge feat to pull this off. 

This is the point that my phone died with 20% of battery. Phones were the biggest weakness of this trip. And the thing is, this isn't the first time that my phone died while we were out, away from the cabin. Why I didn't bring a charger for the car that morning, blows my mind. 

But as Lonnie and I have already proven, we are super resilient. We pulled out of map and started to think of a place that we could grab a happy hour drink and something small to eat. On the back of the map, I see something that says "BEER" in all caps, written huge. I read the description and find out that right down the road is northernmost brewery in the U.S. If my phone hadn't died there is no way we would've found it. 

So we headed the mile and a half down the road and found the brewery. 

The brewery glasses say 

"FAIRBANKS:

Where the people are unusual, and the beer is unusually good."

We also ordered a huge, really different plate of nachos. Was supposed to be a snack and turned into dinner. 

This was our last full day in Alaska and we were a little sentimental as we sat eating and drinking that afternoon. Partly excited too, though, because this would be night 2 of watching the northern lights. 

The Aurora Borealis

It was a lever 5 night! Level 5!
I have to be honest. When people kept talking about it being a level 5 out of 9, I felt like that still wasn't amazing. It wasn't until I understood that the norm was a level 3/4 that I felt really good about it.

I also need to point out that we had tremendous luck while we were there. No rain, all sunshine, warm weather. But our best luck was happening on this night (and the next). The Aurora Borealis would be a level 5 and the sky was crystal clear.

Park Ranger Eric took us to a place called Wickersham Dome. There were other cars there and originally Eric wanted to hike to a place to sit and watch but it was just too cold so we stayed in the car. We would jump out and take pictures and then jump back into the semi-warmth.

First, I was a slacker and didn't look at how I should be taking these pictures though I knew that my phone had to be on a special setting. So, as we started the stake out around midnight, I sat googling 'how to take pictures of the northern lights' and playing with my camera. Luckily, it was easier than I thought to change the settings and the more I tried to take the pictures, the better I got at it.
Second, we didn't have a tripod. So, we got crafty and would put the camera on the car to keep it still. Even using the strap to prop it toward the sky. Genius, right.

And so, here are our amazing pictures from night 1.

The amazing thing about the lights is how quickly they change. They are dancing and swaying and o two pictures are alike. Lonnie and I watched a video about the lights while at the Museum of the North but I still do not understand them completely. This night we stayed out until 4, an we had an hour drive back to town. Lonnie and I both agreed that without Eric we would've given up long before this moment and gone back to the cozy cabin, it was just really cold in the car. But I'm glad we stayed.
But it was absolutely successful.

Northern Light Hunting night 2:
I will give the details of our 2nd day at the cabin in the next post but now I'll show more pictures of those beautiful northern lights. This 2nd night Eric went with us again but we went to Murphy Dome that night and had already decided to not stay out too late, meaning we wanted to leave around 2am.
We parked at midnight and started waiting. They were so so faint at that moment. Luckily it was still pretty clear, but we knew that we could still miss seeing the lights since we were planning on leaving early. The best times to see them are between 12 and 6, they might not getting truly amazing until 3 or 4... 2 hours go by and seriously, we almost see nothing. And then right as we were getting ready to leave, we saw them. Eric borrowed a tripod from his work and we were able to borrow it and get some amazing shots. We even had a nice guy press the shutter button for us so that we could all be in the picture.

As we drove down the hill they were starting to get even crazier so we stopped again. 

I am still in disbelief that I was able to see this, to sit under the lights and watch them dance and tantalize. Just one more of those times where I wanted to sit and just see, not miss a moment.

Park Ranger Eric gave us these certificates when we got back.

Denali and the Dry Cabin

Denali is about 2.5 hours away from Fairbanks. We ate waffles from the hotel breakfast and packed up all of our stuff because we were moving to a cabin that night. Somehow we managed to really make a mess in that hotel room. Packing our things turned out to be harder than we thought. But we made it happen and started our road trip.
The trip there is beautiful.
We were told that our last chance to eat or get gas before getting into the park was in a small town called Healey. There were literally 2 restaurants and 2 gas stations. I mean, if you didn't know it was a town, you never would've known. We chose a little cafe that was pretty good and then headed to the park. What we weren't expecting was the ghost town that is right before getting to the park entrance. There is an entire town that is boarded up during the winter. Cute stores, hotels, and swanky restaurants all closed and locked until the summer. And so we just kept driving.

Entrance to the park.

Denali still isn't completely open yet. You can only drive about 12 miles in. There is one visitors center open and we stopped there, asked some questions and spent some money. Then moved on to our real goal, seeing Mt. McKinley, originally called Denali. We drove to the end of the road and decided to walk the Mountain Vista Trail.

These were taken on the road inside the park.

"The mountains are calling and I must go." -John Muir

This is a terrible picture but the mountain top seen in the center of the photo is Denali. My phone could not do it justice, but it is huge. It's still 80 miles away, standing at 20,322 ft (Mt. Rainier stands at 14,409 ft. so you can imagine how overwhelming this mountain is). 

I know these pictures seem repetitive but standing there, on that trail with the mountains surrounding, was breathtaking. It was cold, there was a strong wind and I found myself kind of wishing to be back at the car. Stupid. I had to make myself stop and look. Really look. I found myself walking and being so thankful for creation and the opportunity to travel and see this beauty. 

We were so anxious to see wildlife here in Alaska. We felt sure that we would and found ourselves just searching fields and woods for something all day. While in the park we happened upon a ranger and stopped her to ask about seeing animals. She told us it was napping time but if we waited until around 7pm, we would see a herd of Caribou that lays in the sun in one of the fields near the entrance. It was like 3pm at that point and we just couldn't wait that long. So, our one place we thought we were sure to see a moose or a bear also turned out to be a total bust. 

When we left Denali we drove the 2.5 hours back, listening to the same top 40 pop songs that we heard on the way. We went straight to our new cabin and got settled. 

This place is darling. Like I said already, it is a dry cabin. Lucky for us, Jutta and Rainer (owners of the cabin) have installed a water tank under the sink that allows water to come into the cabin through the faucet. The tank has to be refilled everyday, though. 

Isn't it darling! 

That's me on the porch writing in the guestbook.

The downstairs area. 

A small kitchen, living room, and dining room. Thankfully there was wifi so Lonnie was able to talk to the outside world.

Upstairs loft. 

Lonnie's first words after going up and touching the beds were "...and the beds are hard as rocks." And they did seem that way. On our first night we crawled into these beds around 5:30am. I was freezing after being in the car watching the lights for so long, so I wore pants, a sweatshirt, wool socks and added 2 extra blankets to the bed. Also, as an extra precaution to keep the cold away, I continued to hold onto the hothands I had while in the car. At some point I woke up burning. Literally. 

A hothand was trapped between my back and the bed and I was on fire. But even after throwing the hothands out, my butt was so hot. Jutta later told us that the beds are made from some type of foam that's supposed to be super special. Who knows. But they were amazing. 

It was a cozy welcome place after being out so late in the cold. 

And of course, the thing most interesting thing about this cabin...the outhouse. 

There it is, just steps outside of the house. The door to the bathroom is on the left and the shower on the right. The thing about the shower, though, it's frozen in the winter. So, yeah, no shower. The outhouse was clean and nice. You do your business in a bag with a toilet seat over it. Once your business is done, you put 2 scoops of compost in over the business. It's supposed to stop any smells. Unbelievably (and thankfully!), Jutta and Rainer come and change that bag everyday... It makes sense to change it so often before it gets really gross or full, but still. 

Just think though, it's midnight and you have to pee... or you wake up at 3am and have to pee... or you wake up on the morning and the cabin is so cozy but you have to pee... and to do that, you have to put your shoes on and go outside. Go outside in temperatures that could be -40 degrees (though, it was only as low as like 30 at night while we were there). Think about how cold that seat is... bad. 

Taken from window of the cozy cabin. Nope.

But it made us feel so Alaskan. 

Overall, the cabin was great. Still no moose that day but we napped and prepared to go on our first northern lights hunting trip.