Dateline July 4, 2011, Fairbanks, Alaska
After Denali it was hard to imagine the next stop topping that beauty. Still, on we went to Fairbanks. We found a state park campground close to the University of Alaska, on the Chena River, with great sites built among the trees. We camped there with Pete and Bunny Warenski the first night and enjoyed a good steak dinner at the picnic table with some nice wine. We built a campfire and kept the cocktails going into the evening.
After a good night's sleep we headed out for golf. There was one course we had to play because it was the most northern USGA course in America, the North Star Golf Club. We met up with Pete and Bunny again, joined by Patrick and Anna Carney of Ticonderoga, New York, had lunch, and headed out for the first tee.
The staff was great. The head pro, Drew Wahlin, took pictures of the group and shared a lot of fun stories about golf in Alaska.
We were all given certificates suitable for framing, awarded for playing the most northern golf course. The golf was fun, and the rain held off until the sixth hole.
Janice finished the front 9 in 2 over par, 38. Her game was still there, even with only the occasional round. We stopped at the end of nine and were given rain checks for the back, then settled in early at the nineteenth hole for a beer and asked the staff for dinner suggestions in the area. They recommended the Silver Gulch Brewery, just north of the course. It turned out to also be the most northern brewery in America.
That made it a hat trick. The most northern course, the most northern brewery, and the farthest north we had ever been ourselves.
Fairbanks has a great founding story. The town was founded by a swindler named E.T. Barnette, who set out to start a gold mining boom town like the others spreading out from Dawson City to Hope to Nome.
He boarded a paddle boat up the Tanana River and told the captain that if he needed to lighten the load along the way, drop him off on the riverbank. The captain promptly got lost. GPS was not yet an option. He ended up on the Chena River, where the riverboat ran aground, and he dropped Barnette off right there with all his materials and his Japanese cook. That is how Fairbanks was founded.
The location turned out to be lucky. Barnette met an Italian prospector named Felix Pedro, who had staked a claim just a little north of where Barnette had been left. It was not a big claim, but it was real. Big enough that Barnette sent his Japanese cook back down to Dawson City with word that there was gold in Fairbanks. The news hit the local papers in the lower 48 and a stampede started.
Some gold was found, and the city began to grow. Barnette eventually founded a bank where the miners could deposit their gold. Then an audit showed that Barnette had been swindling the gold himself. Gee, no FDIC for protection. He was found guilty of bank fraud, disappeared to the lower 48, and is not held in any esteem here to this day.
The locals today take the gold and oil industry as the center of attention. There is a group that would like to secede from the state of Alaska, and they hate the EPA and other government controls that do not let them pursue their free endeavors. At the same time, all Alaskans love the environment and live in it all seasons of the year. They take care of it on their own.
July 3rd, our anniversary, it was raining, and we were getting somewhat use to it, Right!. The first event of the day was laundry, followed by a visit to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska. It was excellent. The interesting aspect was that, having visited so many of the local museums by this point in the trip, the exhibit was almost a summary of what we had already seen. We met the rest of the traveling crew back at the campground and had a few cocktails. Hal, Kim, Pete, and Bunny wanted to join us for our anniversary dinner, so we all went to the Pump House Restaurant and Saloon.
The Pump House is a great old tin building on the National Register of Historic Places. We had, of course, brought some wine for the special day. The restaurant served us our bottle of Stanley Lambert Sparkling Chardonnay, a great wine made by our friends Jim and Pam Lambert at their winery in the Barossa Valley, Australia. A wonderful evening was had by all.
On July 4th we went to the Chena Hot Springs Resort, about 50 miles east of Fairbanks. It was a beautiful ride. Hal, Kim, and Benny joined us and made for a great trip. The highlight was the Aurora Ice Museum, with ice carvings made by Steve and Heather Brice. Between them, they have won 16 World Ice Art Championships.
There are four ice bedrooms available for a night's stay. You would have to be nuts. There are many other carvings inside the museum, including an ice polar bear that was used in a Coke commercial a few years back. Back at the campground, the weather cleared and we had a wonderful 4th of July picnic. The next morning we left Fairbanks and began the trip to the lower 48.
