Here Moosey Moosey...

This morning we cooked breakfast in our apartment and caught a taxi to the airport to grab our rental car. Once we picked up our Lego red Impala, we headed to the University of Alaska Museum, which had been highly recommended by the railroad tour guide, two taxi drivers and Lonely Planet, plus it was another rainy day, so a good museum day. The museum was filled with both contemporary art and artifacts from the native cultures. It also had huge bones and tusks from mammoths and mastodons and a 36,000 year old bison (called "Blue Babe") that had been preserved in the permafrost. (as I am writing this later, Gavin asked, "Hey, I never saw the frozen bison, did you?" How in the world did he miss seeing a huge BISON - I saw him walk right by it! :) )

Me and a snuggly teddy bear. :)

One of the contemporary art pieces in the Alaska Museum. This one is made from an old outhouse and visitors are encouraged to sit inside it.

After the Alaska museum, we headed to the grocery store to stock up for our impending Alaska Highway road trip. We went back to the apartment for lunch, then drove to the Chena Hot Springs Resort about 60 miles away from Fairbanks on the aptly named Chena Hot Springs Road; it was a paved highway that ended in the archway entry to the resort. On the way to the resort we stopped at a little coffee shop for some chai and coffee, and Gavin snatched a couple mayo and ketchup packets to use on our road trip, but was disappointed they didn't have sugar packets for us to snatch; we didn't want to buy whole packages of sugar and mayonnaise for our two days on the road and have to throw them away, so we had resolved earlier in the day to eat/drink somewhere where we could gnab a couple, because we're classy like that. :)

Chena Hot Springs Resort was a large, peacefully rustic-looking complex with the hot springs at the center. We started out in their outdoor rock pool, a sulfur-scented pool surrounded by large rocks to sit on when we needed a break from the heat of the pool. Behind the rocks, a garden of sunflowers and black eyed susans added even more beauty. There was a fountain/sprinkler in the middle of the pool spraying cool water, and a hose spraying a thick, strong jet of water at the opposite end of the pool. It seemed to be a "rite of passage" of sorts to get across the pool to the large jet; the pool got INCREDIBLY hot going toward the jet, so hot that people were climbing over the rocks rather than walking through the pool to get there. Gavin and I tried a couple of times before finally making it over to the cooler jet - walking quickly through the unbearably hot pocket of water. While we were cooling off under the strong jet, one of the attendants came over and added more cold water; I guess the pool was getting a bit dangerously hot. After going through the hot temperatures back to the cooler part of the pool, I crawled up onto the rock directly under the sprinkler and stood out of the hot water to cool my lobster-red body down.

The rock pool at Chena Hot Springs Resort.

Panorama of the rock pool of Chena Hot Springs Resort.

After cooling off in the indoor pool filled with noisy kids, we showered and headed to the lodge to have dinner. Neither of us were in the mood for a heavy meal, so we had soup and salad. At the end of the meal we nabbed a couple of the available sugar packets to take on our road trip, rationalizing it by saying "They charged me $14 for a SALAD, they can give us a few sugar packets!" :)

After dinner we headed back to Fairbanks, and on the way we FINALLY got to see some wildlife! In one ten-mile stretch, we for spotted a cow moose and her calf with teensy antlers that were walking along the road ditch, completely unconcerned that we stopped right beside them, less than 20 feet away, to take pictures. A little while later, we saw a bull moose with huge antlers drinking from a pond. I opened the window and yelled "Here, moosey moosey" in my opera voice to get it to look at me. It worked, but unfortunately we only had our iPhones and not our good camera... A couple miles later get another cow moose was wandering down the road ditch. The proximity to the road of all these moose explained the abundance of totaled cars we had seen along the road - all with large holes smashed in the windshields. I guess moose are a very real road hazard here! We made it back to our apartment just after dark and searched the skies for our last chance to see aurora borealis, but alas none were to be found, so we went to bed; we have to get up early to start our road trip tomorrow!

 

A beautiful sunset on the way back to Fairbanks.

 

If you look really closely, you can see a big bull moose standing out in the water. Stupid iPhone with no functional zoom... (or stupid us for forgetting the good camera! :) )

 

A cow moose and her calf. :)

 

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