Thursday July 29
Our last day! Erik reserved us a tour at Chena Hot Springs resort for the ice sculpture tour at Aurora Ice Museum. We drove over an hour from North Pole to the resort. The ice museum was freezing (of course—25 degrees!). We were provided coats (huge men’s coats). It was a neat experience. For $15 more we could have drank an apple martini out of ice glasses, if we drank. We watched them make the ice glasses for the martinis on our way out.
We saw a moose on the side of the road. By the time we got close to it, she ran across the road to get away from our car.
Aurora Ice Museum
Mardi Gras mask
Joust
Cheetah
Frozen flowers
Christmas Tree
Frozen fireplace
Frozen table
The bar was made of ice. Everything was made of ice.
Because it's 25 degrees, the ice doesn't melt, but it does sublime. They have to repair the sculptures every few years, like this bride standing over the chapel.
After the ice museum we decided to go to the hot spring. We weren’t sure that we wanted to go, but we brought our swimsuits with us anyway. The hot spring was definitely hot, especially when we first got in. It was also a bit stinky, but overall it was fun! We also tried a few of the hot tubs. I was worried about being too cold when I got out, but the water was so hot it actually felt good.
We were getting hungry so we drove all the way back to Fairbanks for our linner at Oasis Restaurant & Lounge. It was a dive bar and the food was surprisingly expensive, but it was good food. Erik ordered the Rueben sandwich, and I ordered the beer battered halibut. For an appetizer we ordered the pretzel sticks with beer cheese. I really liked the pretzel sticks, but the cheese was too…beerish for my taste. The waitress was nice but a bit tacky. She was fine for a bar, but she wouldn’t last in a nice restaurant. I also thought it was weird that they didn’t have halibut when I ordered my meal, so I ordered something else. Then we heard the cook shout that they did have halibut, so I changed my order back to the halibut. The food came super fast, Erik hardly had time to wash his hands before the food was at the table.
The pretzels and cheese
Our delicious lunch! Erik looks scary, haha.
We went back to our rental house and packed as much as we could. We went to bed super early (like 5:00pm) in order to at least get some sleep before our flight, which was scheduled to take off around 1 am. I did manage to get some sleep in, but I kept waking up intermittently. Erik set the alarm for 10:30 pm. We packed up all our stuff, and thankfully didn’t go over the weight limit. We flew from Fairbanks to Seattle, and from Seattle to Phoenix. We did buy some more truffles in the Seattle airport to share.
Another picture of fireweed. I heard you can make fire weed jelly out of it, which I would like to try someday.
My salmon bagel from the airport.
The ice museum sculptures look pretty amazing. It's good you had warm coats on. The hot springs seems very inviting, especially when it's cool outside.
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