FAIRBANKS, AK.  Mailing address here at the RV park is North Pole, the next town over.  Fairbanks is the northernmost town in Alaska fit to live in.  There are oil fields, etc farther north, but no decent stores, roads, doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc.  There are two Walgreens in this town, the first we have found since leaving the lower 48, and we are headed there tomorrow to address things Walgreens has texted us about for weeks, but we could not text back or reach them by phone. Verison has been a giant flop on this trip.  There is even a Costco here.  We went shopping tonight at a very nice Safeway, which had the first gallon jugs of spring water, cherries, and blueberries we could get since leaving the lower 48.  I had heard that this is a hard place to live due to harsh winters, but it looks better than everything else we have seen in Alaska.  We are able to connect via WIFI now, and we shall be here another three days, so I hope to get this blog caught up.  It has been very frustrating taking photos but unable to share them.

The last couple days we have had to drive on roads with frost heaves.  These are roads built in areas overlying permafrost layers many feet thick.  Permafrost never completely thaws but will get soft on top when black highways are over them attracting summer heat.  They sometimes partially liquefy on top, turning the ground to a muddy mess.  Old photos of when the army built the Alaska Highway attest to this.  When it refreezes in winter, the ice crystal expands, lifting the highway and splitting open the paving.  Then a quicky patching job is done, leaving bumps.  There also is a rise and fall in the road, rendering it a sort of roller coaster ride.  All this makes for interesting, and sometimes scary, driving with a motorhome.

It is nice to have full hookups here, with 50 amps of power.  It is actually very hot most of the time, and I am glad to have both AC units running during the day.  It is hard to know when it is nighttime here, since it can be late and still light.  This trip has mostly been hot, with brief interludes of cool to cold weather.  Sometimes it rains, but rarely, totally different from what we had been told. 

Once we got near Alaska a few days ago as we approached Skagway, the sky became hazy.  We were accustomed to occasional dusty conditions in British Columbia and (especially) Yukon Territory, but constant haze spoiled all efforts at good photography.  Later the smoke from the numerous Alaska fires compounded the problem.  We are hoping for some clear skies and good photographic light, since we drove by what could have been gorgeous sights on our way to Skagway from Whitehorse, YT, and our drive the last couple days could have produced some wonderful photos if the sky were clear.

Anything within a quarter mile could be photographed carefully, as the scenes below attest.  The haze generally blocked the landscape at a greater distance.