To the North Pole

North Pole, AK is an actual town – one we used to live and where Z-man was born so he was, in effect, returning to see “his people.” But before that, a quick recap. After the tour in Denali, Z-man and I did our weekly 10 mile walk to Healy, AK where we attended church at the Morning Star Baptist Church. Nice service and nice people – Pastor Pete introduced himself before leading the singing, delivering the sermon and finally baptizing his daughter. We drove the rest of the way to Fairbanks and on to Eielson where we got a place for a couple of days.

The photo is of the lake that we were on in Eielson and the home of a few beaver. We couldn’t figure out what the loud “kerplunk” that sounded like a large rock being thrown in the lake was, until we figured out that the beavers would slap their tales to scare us when we got too close. Cooler still was the 4 or 5 fallen trees that were obviously cut down by the beaver.

From Eielson I rode to the airport and picked up a rental Ford Explorer. We drove out Chena Hot Springs Road, back thru Fairbanks via Farmer’s Loop Rd but didn’t see anything. Mom and I enjoyed the drive around Fairbanks, but recognized that it had changed significantly in the 15 years since we left here.


The next day Mom took the kids to the Knotty Shop (which is a very cool shop made out of knotty pine. They have all sorts of interesting Alaskan made things – this was written by mom because this story needed a little more than bullet points!!) while I drove to Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. Pioneer Park is a really neat place that replicates Fairbanks in the early 1900s during the gold rush. We met up at Pioneer Park and drove the rental car back to Santa Claus House in North Pole then to our old house on Wanda Dr. The house looked totally different. Z couldn’t remember his room (not sure why since he was almost 18 mos when we left here). More needed by mom here. The house is an A frame and that and the fact that it was still brownish red were the only two things that were recognizable. So much had changed. They closed off the garage, moved the front door and cut down the near acre of woods in the back. The grass was beautiful and reminded me of the 3 square inch of grass that my dear husband tried to grow while we lived there. Anyway, on the more exciting bullet points by Dad……. moved to another RV park near the Chena River that was pretty nice.

Z-man and I hit the DMV so he could get an AK driver’s license which turned out to be a challenge……something about scalping Packer tickets and a mug shot, but it was all unclear. Took quite a while to convince them that he could get one comparable to the one he got in Michigan, but we were successful. After lunch we headed to Pioneer Park which, unfortunately, was closed for the season on Labor Day. Turns out my desire to run the Equinox marathon has messed up our timing in many ways. Anyway, we made the best of it then ran up to Beaver Sports to find out my shocks on my bike are shot (not that it was any news) and will take $125-150 to rebuild. After a yummy dinner of potato soup in sourdough bread bowls, the kids and I went to Freddy’s for ice cream while Mommy toiled at home cleaning the RV in preparation for leaving Fairbanks the following morning.

GO PACK!

Dad