Driving about 200 miles west, we passed through Delta
Junction, the end of the Alaska Highway, and continued on to Fairbanks. The road was paved and fairly good, and the
scenery was pleasant, not spectacular, with rolling hills and a mix of spruce
and aspen, along with many small lakes and ponds. Just before getting to
Fairbanks, we passed through North Pole, AK, but we chose to forego all the many
Santa-related tourist spots in that town.
Fairbanks is the second largest city in the state. My reaction in coming up on what appeared on
the map to be the densest part of the city, the downtown, was to wonder where
the city was. No skyscrapers, no major
industrial areas, just a sprawling group of buildings along the Chena River.
We did a major grocery shopping trip, knowing that after
Fairbanks, it will be about a week before we see any big stores again. Then we settled into our site at Chena River
Wayside, a state park in the middle of the city. It is apparent from here that we are no
longer in a remote area: airplanes are coming in for a landing or taking off
from the nearby airport, and we can hear the sounds of cars on the two roads
that form two boundaries of the park. Still, the park itself has many trees and
shrubs, which is not a common thing in private RV parks, and our site is
spacious. We are getting some experience
with the oft-lamented Alaska mosquitoes, but they don’t seem to be nearly as
bad as we saw back in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The campground host assured us that this is an easy city to
bike around, so one of the two days we are here, we will head out to explore,
using the bike path that runs along the Chena all the way to downtown.
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