And The ADVENTURE Continues...: June 20, 2016 Trip to the North Pole, Alaska and June 21, 2016 Ice Museum, Mushers Museum and the Visitor and Cultural Center, Fairbanks

Monday, June 20, 2016 Trip to the North Pole, Alaska

Terry and I started our morning by doing some much needed laundry and the boys went to replace the broken belt from yesterday and other repair things.

After lunch we headed to the North Pole. I expected it to be much bigger than it was. It was a nice store with a lot of Christmas things. We bought some items but didn’t find that special thing. Still a good day and we headed home.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016 Ice Museum, Mushers Museum and the Visitor and Cultural Center, Fairbanks

We were going to go to Pioneer Park but the weather had other ideas. It started to rain and was expected to rain most of the day so we changed our plans to do inside stuff. The place was the Ice Museum. We thought that we were only going to see sculptures. The first 25 minutes we watched a movie explaining how the Ice Sculpturing first got started in 2005 in Fairbanks. Now Fairbanks has the title of The Ice Sculpting Capital of the World! The Competition occurs in the month of March and people from around the world compete. Some of these sculptures are 20 feet tall. Last year they actually cut 1500 blocks of ice and they measure 5’x8’x3’.

After the movie lights came on and we were allowed to walk into their freezer rooms with their ice displays. Temperature was 20 degrees. They were nice enough to supply us with nice winter coats. There was an ice bar, a snowmobile, a house with table and benches, dog sled and the best part was the ice slide. I screamed as I was going down it but it was fast and it was fun.

Then we went to the Musher’s Museum and saw a short film of an Yukon Quest race as lunch was served from the restaurant next door. There was a lot of memorabilia and information about the mushers, dogs and the races. Terry was looking for a shirt but no shirt for her. The Yukon Quest Race goes from Fairbanks, AK to Whitehorse, YT. This is not to be confused with the Iditarod which starts in Anchorage and goes to Nome.

Jim had an idea to go and find the antlers arch. We went around a couple of blocks before we got a map and it turned out to be at the Visitors and Cultural Center. Terry had wanted to see this place so we did both. We saw a dance performance done by the Alaska Native youth. We saw a lot of Cultural displays as well as the antlers arch. Moose and caribou antlers were donated from all over Alaska to form this arch. This wasn’t such a bad day in the rain after all.