July 2, 2015, Thursday, North Pole, Alaska ( Cabin Life )
The North Pole, Alaska cabin is amazing and a perfect spot to start adventures using it as a home base for a few days. We took off early in the morning and headed for the Discovery PaddleSteamer that has navigated the waters of the mighty Nenana River for the past 100 years. Granted, this is not the exact same ship but is a updated replica ship and its still working the waters of this Fairbanks river as a cruise ship demonstrating what went on a century ago.
A bit touristy for our liking, however it was pretty rad to hear how they lived in the early days. ShirlGirl often says I should have been born in the 1800’s.
We don’t really have an itinerary for this multi-week adventure just places that we are interested in seeing and the cool stuff we come across. With the Discovery boat tour under our belt we headed south towards Healy, Alaska.
ShirlGirl has a “thing” for those adventurers that have been characters in movies such as Christopher McCandless in the movie “Into the Wild.” McCandless was a free-spirit backpacker who thought he could make it in the wilds of Alaska and ended up dieing in a Fairbanks City Bus that was converted to a hunting cabin just outside Healy, Alaska. So we went to check it out.
Healy is a small town that sits 20 miles or so outside Denali National Park. It has a draw for wayward types that think they want to come to Alaska and work or freeload at Denali. They soon find out that as summer ends the real survival is about to begin.
The 49th State Brewery has a replica Chris McCandless bus on display along side their Beer Garden so it was perfect to pull in and have a couple beers and check out the replica bus and read about how stupid Chris McCandless was. (My personal opinion is he was a fawking idiot. (Don’t hold back Dirty)
The replica bus is filled with photos and stories relating to McCandless. The majority of Alaskan locals agree with my opinion about McCandless. Fairly cool idea but poorly executed. When you read into McCandless’ life you see this was not the first thing he executed poorly in his life.
The 49th Brewery was spot on in the beer department!
The inside of that place is classic Alaska! If you ever have the chance to check it out you should and be sure to order up a couple of your favorite brews as they were delicious!
We drove the 20 miles to Denali National Park and spun around there for a couple hours doing the tourist thing. Yep, you gotta do it! The visitor center, the town and all was cool. The weather was misty drizzle and it was pretty dang nice at 65 degrees and a bit drizzly. Nothing a delicious home brew of coffee along side of the road couldn’t fix!
The views driving back to Fairbanks were spectacular. We stopped at a native roadside log cabin to stretch our legs and look around and we met a young 20 year old girl that has only been to Fairbanks a few times in her life. Sweet and innocent as she worked behind the counter of the small log cabin gift shop she told us her second job was ranch sitting and she had to go “muck out” the stalls at the ranch for a couple hours. We silently chuckled and then told her we would love to trade her out with our Megan for a month or so! Hahaha…ShirlGirl and I come up with some great ideas every so often.
UTV Underground Kingpin, Joey Giovanni, recommended a chinese restaurant near Fairbanks named PAGODA Chinese, a place that Guy Fieri, the Diners-Drives-Dives guy and we found the restaurant in North Pole, Alaska not far from our cabin. What can I say but HOMERUN! The food, the service and the restaurant is out of this world! Thanks Joey!
It was a full day and ShirlGirl was getting into the navigation spirit about halfway through the day. We stopped and let the Deizel boy run, swim, explore and chase squirrels through the forest multiple times today so when he was in the truck he was crashed out!
Off to the silence of the cabin!
Xplore The Wild 