April 30, 2009 – Fairbanks and Ice Bergs

We decided today to make the trek to Fairbanks and check out campground availability and the availability of water and dump.  So off we went….

We followed the Tanana River Valley:

 

 

The river is flowing here and making it’s own path through the ice.  How about these icebergs:

The mountains in the background are the Alaskan Range  - which we see every day – Beautiful!!

We checked out a number of campgrounds.  We found one in the North Pole (south of Fairbanks) that was open and had what we needed (a little costly for us).  We found one other but they could give us only electric.  So we had a list of places that had dump stations and not one is open.  What was really interesting to us was we were told the ground was frozen and they would open up on May 15th. (This may be sarcastic but does something magical happen that day??? Frozen the 14th and Unfrozen the 15th – Hmmmmmm!).  Oh well!  With no availability of water and dump, the state parks would not be feasible for us.   So we have decided to stay here until the end of next week at least!!

We did some site-seeing around Fairbanks (Ladies, I found a bead store – Yippee!) and then did some grocery shopping before heading home.

Here is the Chena River that goes thru Fairbanks – it is running but there are ice bergs floating down the river – Cool!  :-)

On our way back down, there were different areas where we saw icebergs piling up on top of one another.  One place (Salcha River) there was an ice – jam:

And more icebergs on their way:

 

 We found out that those people that live near the river have been evacuated because of the flooding.  With the weather we are having (70’s – breaking records), they are hoping it lets loose soon.

Looking up the Salcha River:

And the daylight hours continue to expand – :-)