Friday
| A long day leaving Atlanta in the afternoon, layover hours in Salt Lake City, midnight in Anchorage, and finally Fairbanks with no baggage by 1:30am. Doris from the wonderful Fairbanks Hotel is there waiting and I crash at 2:00am (6:00am EDT). |
Saturday
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![]() I spend the afternoon on the Riverboat Discovery drinking Alaskan Amber Ale and standing on the upper deck in the glorious autumn weather.
Then back to the hotel where luggage is still missing, but after a few
nasty phone calls to Alaska Airlines and 45 minutes, the suitcase is
finally delivered around 6:00pm. Now it's a mediocre dinner at Soapy
Smith's, then to early bed around 9:30pm.
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Sunday
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Up with the sunrise on another beautiful day, so I walk several blocks to
a grocery store where, to my delight, I smell muffins. I buy two of
those, a six-pack of Tab (joy!), and a pint of chocolate milk. Although I had planned on a busy day, I decide instead to spend the day walking, window-shopping, and relaxing. I bring one of my purchased books down to the riverfront and spend an hour or two on a bench reading. At 5:00pm, I walk over to a terrific Italian restaurant (Pasta Bella) and have tortellini with cream sauce and 2 glasses of Columbia Crest Merlot. I waddle back to the hotel and sit in the lobby watching TV, chatting with the woman behind the desk, and working on baby Jordan's new Christmas stocking. I'm to bed early again around 10:00pm. |
Monday
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Bright and early down at the transit depot just a few blocks from the
hotel to purchase a one-day pass and catch the bus to North Pole, a small
town about 12 miles east of Fairbanks. It was here that my great aunt
Pauline ran a "distinguished" establishment: Pauline's Rainbow Bar. The
trip is uneventful but I spend a relaxing 90 minutes at the North Pole Coffee Roasters
watching the Today Show and reading the Daily News.
Tomorrow will be an early and busy day so I decide to walk down to the grocery store again to stock up for the train trip and get a bit of something for dinner. Joy! Smoked oysters and Wheat Thins! I walk to the hotel happily. No, trauma and anguish! They don't open like sardine cans, they need a dratted can opener. I sit on my hotel bed not happy with my predicament. But the apples, leftover muffin, and Tab keep me sated. That night, following earlier instructions, the guy at the lobby desk knocks on my door around midnight to say there's a great display of Northern Lights that evening. I sit on the curb outside the hotel for nearly 30 minutes -- beautiful. |
Tuesday
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![]() We arrive at noon and I'm off on a 2-hour rafting trip down the Nenana River. The weather cooperates again though the water splashing on us in our large orange coveralls is only 37 degrees. We see some of the first Dall sheep of the season high above us on a rock outcropping, but no other "wild" life to speak of.
Shower, change, then off to a big salmon dinner and two Alaskan Ambers. The weather is turning colder and cloudy, but I take a short hike down a couple of trails as the sky darkens around 9:00pm.
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Try to sleep on the plane as it stops in Anchorage and Seattle and catch
30 minutes here and there. We arrive in Atlanta around 2:45pm and... you
guessed it -- the bag has arrived, but the baggage cart hasn't made it.
Three for three on checked baggage. The young lady in the Delta Airlines
baggage claim office offers me another baggage cart she finds in the back
in exchange for my lost one. Is this legal? I go home to catch a few winks and am out until late that evening, just in time to open the door for the baggage man who delivers the cart. |