July 24 - Around Fairbanks, Alaska

We took the day to get familiar with the area around Fairbanks.

First, we rode the Steece Highway as far north as the pavement goes; 42 miles (just past Chatanika).  This was a neat ride, both in that the scenery was great, and in that it changed both Norm's and my perspective about Fairbanks being in mountainous country.  Our previous impressions were that Fairbanks lays in gently rolling hills.  But that's not true - the hills are significant mountains.  They are not as spectacular as other high topped mountains we've seen, but mountains nonetheless.

On the way, we stopped to see the Alaska Pipeline.  It's structure is quite interesting, with heat exchangers to keep the underground foundations cold enough that it doesn't melt the Permafrost. (The heat exchangers are the silver things on top of the supporting posts.)

The pipeline itself is 4 feet in diameter, and has to have a cylindrical "pig" pushed down its length every once in a while to clean off the accumulated "gunk" from the inside walls.

Then, we made a visit to the Honda dealer, just to chat and to say that we had been to the Farthest North Honda Dealer.  We also went to the Harley dealer so that Norm could buy T-shirts for his sons that said - guess what - the "Farthest North Harley Davidson Dealer".  (The Honda dealer didn't have T-shirts, but they did give us a memento; a frame to hold our rear license plates, with "Fairbanks Honda" on it.)

You might wonder if we considered going farther north, say to the Arctic Circle, or to Prudhoe Bay.  We thought about it, but if you consider that the Arctic Circle is 194 miles of nasty gravel road north of Fairbanks (one-way), and Prudhoe Bay is 489 miles of nasty gravel road north of Fairbanks (one-way), we said "No Thank You"!  (At the Honda dealer's, we saw a wrecked Gold Wing GL1500, which was testimony to the dangers of riding the big bikes on that kind of dangerous road.  Its owner went first to the hospital, then back home without his bike.)

We ended the day at "North Pole, Alaska".  Guess who's home this is.

There we visited a man who is Norm's second cousin.  He is a finish carpenter up here, but interestingly he is also an amateur "ice carver".  He carves very large and creative statues of ice in the winter here, and has been hired by some resorts to carve ice statues for them.  The statues of "one block" start out 5ft. wide, 4 ft. thick, and 8ft. high!  He had pictures of previous ones, and they were very well done.

Well, tomorrow we start South, on the second part of our loop.

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