Act3: Into the wild

The returning of SnowDave in Alaska opened a new chapter for my Artic adventure. I moved from J.D. and Dana’s house to SnowDave’s and Suka’s house, that is literally located at the end of the road.

(Dave's house in the one circled in red on the bottom left)

We spent Saturday going south, I really wanted to have that taste of Alaska with steep snow-covered mountains dropping into the sea. We drove along Turnagain arm, so called because Capt. Cook had to turn around (again!) once he entered into the arm. It seems like Capt. Cook and I started having many places in common (and as a note, I highly recommend the book “Blue Latitude, baldly go where Capt. Cook as gone before”).
The place was as magical as I was expecting, but much cooler! Alaska is cold, but when windy, it is truly freezing!
Next day, we started driving north toward Fairbanks, where Dave as a conference to attend for the rest of the week, and we stopped for the night on Dave’s newly built (and still to be finished) cabin. It is just after Denali National Park (a movie was recently filmed around that area “Into the wild”).

It is a wild place. It snowed most of the drive, we saw a wolf and 2 caribous. Doug from the “solid waste clan” explained me that the difference between caribous and reindeer is that reindeer have a red nose that glows in the dark and that they like singing all together, while the caribous are just wild and primitive, otherwise they are pretty much the same animals. Collisions with mooses on roads are so common that in the official state police accident reporting form there is a "car vrs moose" box you can check.

We arrived at the cabin toward sunset and by the time we reached the cabin it was getting dark. Not really a problem if it wasn’t that on the way we saw a very big footprint… a bear footprint! The moment in which Dave put his hand on the floor and compared the size of his hand with the size of the bear claws, I felt the urge to run to the cabin! Bears are supposed to be sleeping this time of the year, but not this one… but after all it is well known that SnowDave attracts bears. There has even been an encounter with a polar bear (that unfortunately was killed) not to far from Fairbanks, that is quite amazing, because polar bear are marine mammals and Fairbanks is way into the interior. Things are gone crazy! We hurried to the cabin and we made an amazing fire that turned the inside temperature close to a Sweden sweat house.

If you are looking to buy land, you can buy up to 5 acres of wilderness for $6000. I do not know what I would ever do with 5 acres of wildness, by the female-crazy-shopping genes are telling me that it sounds like a great idea. I wonder if I will be able to leave Alaska without buying land…

We are now in a hotel in Fairbanks, Dave is attending the conference and today I spent the day into the university’s museum. I met a crazy red-haired, Lisa, that presented to me 2 gold stones and walked me around. Fun! I have no defined plans for the next days yet… definitely one day to enjoy the very ancient waters in Chena hot springs, and 3 days for the backpack trip to another hot springs into the wild (I just read an article about this hike, in which the author and partners really froze! Exciting!!!).

(There was an ice sculture competition not long ago, and all Fairbanks is scattered with ice work)
(The top a totem pole. The art from the South Alaska to British Columbia is very similar, and my very favorite)

("what? a bear? where?" University's museum. The bear's name is "Otto")

(this is where I am, 2806 km from the North Pole, and 17198 km from the South Pole)