Wednesday – Fairbanks, Alaska
Hmm, a bit of a hangover this morning which I knew I would have as I was on the rhum last night. That spelling is correct, Lambs Navy Rhum, it says so on the bottle and I think it is the extra H that is causing the Hangovers!!! Anyway, I paid for another day here, I still had some things to do, plus it was still raining down south but it may be clearing in another day or so.
I spent most of the day finally finishing off posting the ride up and down to PB, the next few days would be a lot easier as I did bugger all 🙂 Today though I decided to go see the Pioneer Park, Simon had seen it yesterday, but I was tired yesterday arvo so I knew I would not have enjoyed it as much. So, late in the day I stepped outside, by crikey the smoke was bad today and the bikes had a covering of ash on them as well!
The entry is free, but it looks like the conditions had become bad enough to shut some of the attractions up, a shame really I would have liked to have looked around the stern wheeler! I guess the sign has been there a few days now!
There was a lot of old buildings here, the original ones that were moved from their original sites in town to here. They are now mostly shops that sell whatever, but are original none the less.
I went inside the museum here and had a look around, it was very interesting, some nice exhibits. 🙂
Some more old houses before the distance post, Sydney is just under 10,000 miles away as the plane flies.
These flowers were the only nice thing that I smelt all day, the fragrance even blocked out the smell of smoke for short while 🙂
I liked this old steam shovel, it reminded me of the old kids show Mr Squiggle, there was one of these on that show 🙂
This old stamp mill was interesting, I knew of them from the Wilbur Smith books I read years ago, but had no idea what one looked like, so now I do 🙂 I reckon these would have been full on noise makers though!
Now, this was a weird looking contraption and not that successful either apparently.
I did not spend much more time here, the smoke was getting worse as the temperature dropped, so I went back and picked up Simon so we could go for a beer feed. We had seen this place the other day and it was quite close, so we tried it out.
Check out the old banger next to my bike, I did not see any bailing wire holding it together, but it sure needed some 🙂 The initial choice on the menu was a pork schnitzel type thing, but they had no rice nor some other part that was usually on offer, so I changed to a soup and a sirloin steak, great tucker, my 2nd steak in 4 months!!
This old chap was a great conversationalist; well I think he must be as he spent all his time talking to himself 🙂 At a guess, I know which truck outside is his 🙂
After dinner we rode back through the haze to the Marlin bar we had drunk at last week, it is down in a cellar, the rest of this building is dorm rooms.
We only had the one beer before heading back, I bought some more coke for the last of the rhum. I spotted a Transalp in the car park, but it was so clean I guessed he was heading up to Prudhoe Bay. I left a message with the desk to ask him to come up to our rooms if he wished for a chat and he did do so shortly after. I was on the phone to Roger, a chap who lives in Wasilla, north of Anchorage. He offered some beds if we wanted them and a workshop as well, so thanks for that, we made initial plans to somehow get down there. The smoke was so bad down south that the road had been closed in a few places, so it may not be possible tomorrow. He gave me an alternate nice route to there, it included 130 mile of dirt, so that would only be done if it was dry. After this I went to Simons room and met up with the Transalp rider. His name was Vincent, from Holland and was just starting his trip, he has 6 months to do the trip up and back down to Tierra Del Feugo, so I may see him on the road.
I spent some more time later finishing the rhum and chatting with Peter back home on Googletalk, that is fun. The weather for tomorrow now says rain for Fairbanks and everywhere down south and east and west, we may be going nowhere!!
Day 14 miles and 23 km
Trip – 29,219 miles and 47,023 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 