Tourist in My Own Town

As if 15 miles of mountainous hiking wasn't enough, I convinced the Mark and Joel that we could see some Musk Ox if they went for a 4 mile run with Matt and I. Joel ran the GB marathon with us, so I knew he was in shape. We convinced Mark to ride alongside us on Matt's mountain bike. A mile into the trail, we found a little lost duckling. I literally ALMOST squashed him as I ran. We didn't find his mother. He started following us down the trail, when we returned, he was nowhere in sight. Something will find him, either Mama Duck or a fox.



Mark nearly flew off the bike when he hit a big tree root at full speed. NDE #5, he had all he could stand of our crazy adventures. When we got to the LARS (UAF research farm) we whipped out cameras and binoculars for a closer look at the giant buffalo-like animals.


In the three years of living in the Golden Heart City, I have spent my time avoiding the tourist places, especially in the summertime. Today, I got to experience how outsiders view my home. We went to the visitor's center, and I have to say, their exhibits are better than the Museum of the North at UAF. The visitor's center has hourly movies and exhibits as well as the typical brochure and travel information. And it's all free! The museum most definitely is NOT free.

We also visited Pioneer Park. I've been to the park many times, but this was the first summertime excursion--when the riverboat was open. Inside were small scale models of a lot of the Interior villages. Very well done. Also, there were old photos of Fairbanks and information in the engine room on how the ship worked and what it was used for during it's glory years. Joel rides the bucking Salmon.



Recently, Joel has gotten into Geocaching. He talked us into looking for a few. Although we attempted to locate four geocaches, we only found two of them, one by the visitor's center, one near our house under the Chena River bridge. It was like treasure hunting and a lot of fun. Joel also got to drop a tracking coin into the cache, one that can be tracked on a website and so far has only been found in different caches in his town in Michigan. Now it's in Alaska.



What visit is complete without ice cream? We took them to our local homemade ice cream place, which (luckily or unluckily--how you think of it) is located less than .25mi from our place. It was delicious. We returned home for our tiebreaker Euchre tournament, which Mark and I kicked butt, and went to sleep. They return to Michigan in the morning.