Act3: the bush and Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn

Weekend! Not that during the weekend life in Fairbanks gets crazy, but with Dave finishing its training, we had more time to go around. On Friday Dave still had some work to do, but this time I was more than happy to follow him. He hired a bush pilot to fly over his study area, and I jumped in! Not everybody knows that Alaska is actually highly covered by “bush”. “Bush” are all those areas that are not reachable by roads. There are many villages like that in the northern and western coast, that are only reachable by bush plane or by dog sleds. And a bush pilot is a pilot able to land anywhere, anytime, and with good survival skills. We flow for about 6 hours a small Cessna (even smaller than the one we use to go to Ofu island) with skis instead than wheels. During summer, the pilot changes the skis with floaters, so be able to land on streams. I felt much like a scientist or a film maker flying low and spinning with small circles over the forest looking for a group of wolves to film or to be studied. Flying over the mountains was also breath-taking, with their cliffs and peaks, and strong sudden currents that would shake our plane around. We try to land for lunch on a frozen stream, we ran flying at about 1 m high for a while until the pilot decided the ice did not look strong enough to hold us up, and he finally found an abandoned air strip.

On Saturday, we took it easy. We sleep until late, when to Dave’s friend Shannon (that has a wonderful cabin in the mountain and that inspired me to repaint my bedroom as soon as I am back in Samoa), and then we started driving south toward Dave’s cabin. We originally planned to go backpacking to Tanana hot spring, but we had many reasons to postpone it to my next visit to Alaska.On the way we stopped in one of the most original pubs ever. Skinny Dicks Halfway Inn. The original name was Halfway Inn, because this motel is located halfway between ….. and Fairbanks. Then a guy names Dick bought it and decided to add the Skinny Dick to the front.

Another required stop was also the sleeping village of Nenana. This village, which lies on the banks of the Tanana stream, was the center used for the construction of the Alaskan railways. Every year, since 1917, bets are on when the Tanana river ice will brake. A tripod, planted into the ice, is connected to a clock that stops when the ice goes out. A part the fact that I believe this most be one of the oldest American tradition, I could not pass by Alaska during this time without placing by bet, especially considering that Saturday was the last day. Dave chose a combination of ex-girlfriends’ birthdays, and I choose the date in which James Bond will be back from his mission. And, most importantly, we did our bets in front of a tasty dinner. And then in a hurry to the cabin, I was afraid of more bears roaming around. Sunday, today, we actually did some fixing work on the cabin, that now looks much better with my indispensable addition of a wooden spoon. A house without a wooden spoon it is complete. Hopefully the insulation we put would keep the cabin slightly warmer, because this morning, when we woke up, the temperature inside the cabin was 28’F (about -2’C –minus!-). We started driving south toward Anchorage after a tasty left-over lunch, and we stopped at the Denali National Park for a little hike. Hiking really makes me feel good, even if it is in snow and wind.

(This is the stream that the guy in "into the wild" could not pass)

(I found some wolf pooh on the way! he must have eating a moutain sheep! hummm!!!)

We stopped at Teeknelta for dinner (I had a caribou soup!) and then I took control over the steering wheel. Of course it wasn’t long until a police car was following us with the light on. Dave told me to pull over, and the police guy came to the window… “uh, no, I do not know what the speed limit is here, I was just following the car in front of me”. ”yes, driving license, here it is”. In my mind ‘I was having dinner with the governor of American Samoa 2 weeks ago, does this count?’, ‘I hope my cute accent works here too’, ‘somehow, with a driving license from American Samoa I feel safe’, ‘He is probably going to tell a story to his friends in the pub tonight how he stopped a girl speeding with a driving license from American Samoa and a funny accent’.
“Sorry, did you say the speed limit is 55? Yes, I will respect it, thanks for the warning, have a nice night too”.