Alaska Adventure - Day 7 - July 8, 2010

Previously: [Day 1] [Day 2] [Day 3] [Day 4] [Day 5] [Day 6]

All my trip photos (so far)


All too soon in was time to leave Beaver Creek. From there it was not too many kilometers before the neutral zone (which actually exists) and then the Alaskan border.

Let me take an aside here. Traveling with anyone can put a strain on a relationship. This is especially true when traveling with your kids, even more so when there are time zone changes, late nights, early mornings, and too much AIS (Bottom In Seat) time. Add to this (perhaps unrealistically) high expectations about your children's ability to cooperate, behave, and not annoy other people, and you may get to the point where you want to leave your kids in the previous country.

That is what happened here when Ella did not want me to take her picture crossing the border, which was right after we yelled at her for playing in the giant Welcome to Alaska pile of dirt.

Some more yelling and pleading and threats that she would never ever get a hamster finally got her to cooperate.

We had miles to go before we slept, but we did still make a few stops. One was for lunch at some place I don't recall - but I do recall there was reindeer sausage, two kinds of fish and an ear shaped piece of cornbread all served in an iron skillet. Not too shabby. We later stopped at Rika's Roadhouse which had some picturesque grounds, but more importantly - ice cream.

We stopped at North Pole, AK where the presence of Santa in his giant giftshop forced me to fabricate some story about how he spends his summers in Alaska so that good girls and boys can visit him.

When we finally found Fairbanks we were free to find some food and some fun. I don't have too much to say about Fairbanks. Even though we stayed there two nights, we really did not see much of Fairbanks. Either that, or there just wasn't too much of Fairbanks to see. But I digress.

We settled on dinner at Some Greek Place after not finding anywhere more compelling that was open. Little known fact - Greek children like very spicy ham on their pizza. I learned this when the pizza my kids were splitting had some very spicy ham on it. My kids are not Greek. Luckily they had previously consumed 2/3 of my steamed clam appetizer so they would survive.

We explored more of Fairbanks, including a walk along the river on the river walk. We also got to a enticing fudge store just after they closed, but the Fudgiers were cool enough to sell us some tasty fudge anyway.

Next: [Day 8] [Days 9, 10, 11]