Fairbanks, Alaska!!!

I really never thought I'd get to Fairbanks, although I've always wanted to come here!  I have to admit I've had a bunch of my preconceived notions shattered by actually coming.  Jeff keeps teasing me about it, but I think all the ideas I've gotten about Fairbanks are from historic novels.  It is actually a city here, there is no snow on the ground, it's NOT cold, I have yet to see a big bearded miner or a sled dog team, and there are cars and restaurants.  I promise I'm not really that naive, but I never really thought about what it was like up here and had I done so, I'm sure I could have figured out that it's like any other place except that it gets colder in the winter (sometimes -40 or -50!!! Thank goodness it doesn't get as cold in Bethel!)

Anyways, enjoy our pictures!  We've had a fantastic time here!  This is the view just before we arrived...

 A picture of actual Fairbanks.  They have real fast food restaurants and cars! LOL

 Most parking lots where you'd be parking long-term (library, high school, etc) have these in them.  They are plugs to plug in your car in the winter time so that your radiator stays warm and starts right up when you get back in.  All the cars up here have a plug-in hanging out the front of the car.  It's a small reminder of how cold it can actually get up here.

 A real cabin from the old days.  You can actually see the rags and mud stuffed between the cracks of the logs.  Unfortunately many tourist sites close around labor day for the winter, so we weren't able to go inside.  A number of museums and other places we wanted to go to had closed down only days before we arrived.  Bad luck on our part.

 This is in the chamber of commerce museum. The plane was called "The Bishop of Alaska".

 There's Jeff and the display!

 This is about fish camp.  Many of the natives up here and around Bethel go to fish camp numerous times over the summer, or even for the whole summer.

 This is a little building where they dried and/or smoked the fish after the women cut them up.

 This rocket is an example of the rockets that the University of Alaska Fairbanks shoots off into the Aurora Borealis for research.  UAF is the only college in the United States to have a rocket range.

 Other than the fact that this is a display, the snow and background is what Bethel looks like outside in the winter.

 I just had to include this...

 The outdoor freezer... :)

 This is the size of the pipes that are the Alaskan Pipeline.  See the size of it.  (More pictures of this to come later).

 Native beading on leather, surrounded by fur. I don't know what it was for, but it was beautiful!