Sunrise in Fairbanks

Sunrise in Fairbanks

We left Denali a day early.  We were supposed to stay three days, but the evening of the second, we decided that we weren’t going to get on the bus again, there was no place to go from the campground if you were not an avid trailblazer, and besides it was cold!

We really agonized over this decision because we had made the commitment for three days.  We felt like we were skulking away.  I asked John what he thought our children would do and he said, “leave, without any hesitation.”  We worried about what we would say to the Rangers when they saw our sticker, because you aren’t supposed to leave your campground in your vehicle.  Finally, I said to John, “Look, these are Park Rangers, not the Border Patrol.  What can they do to us?  Make us turn around and go back?”

When we arrived at Mile 15, none of the Rangers even looked up.  I told John to keep going, and take the sticker off the window and no one would be the wiser.  We still felt a sigh of relief when we got to the entrance.  John stopped and took this picture of the Railroad bridge as we left the Park.

We did stop at the Headquarters and take showers.  They were $4 for a towel and the key, and the showers were nice.  A ground squirrel was in the parking lot.  He had found something someone had left or dropped and was very intent on eating all of it.

  I had to laugh because I’m such a literal person, and when I first heard that the grizzlies ate ground squirrels, I wondered who did the grinding for them!  But, I guess its ground squirrel as opposed to tree squirrel.  Alrighty then!

We were back on the Parks Highway and came to the sign for Stampede Road.  This is the road Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) traveled down before he crossed the rivers and accidently found “the Bus.” 

The road is short, about eight miles long, the last 4 miles of which is narrow and unpaved.  The locals say it is a long hike from the end of Stampede Road to the memorial at the bus, and you have to cross both the Savage and Teklanika Rivers.  They don’t advise it.    We went to mile 4 and turned around.

We came into the town of Nenena, on the river by the same name.  Population 533.  During the 1920’s it was a construction base for the railroad.  And, that famous trip by Warren G. Harding?  (Did you pay attention to the history lesson?)  Well, this is where he drove the golden spike signifying completion of the railroad.    Today, Nenena is a hub for tugboats and barges that traverse the rivers of the interior, taking goods to many isolated villages, which are only accessible by river.

Nenana is famous too, for the Nenana Ice Classic.  This is a big lottery like contest to guess the exact time at which the ice in the river will break up.  It may sound hokey, but the prize money this year was $279,000.  They have this tower, and a camera and a trigger and it is all mechanized to determine the exact time.  The break up signifies that commerce on the river will be starting soon.

We arrived in Fairbanks and were looking for the visitors center.  A sign was posted outside the window at Pioneer Park for June 19: Sunrise  (2:57 am) Sunset (12:46 am) and the number of daylight hours (21 hours 49 minutes and 15 seconds).