The weather lately has been wonderful. Today, in fact, we reached a high of 39F. It's 35F as I type this at 7:30pm. While this is great for the mood, it's not going to be so great for driving when everything refreezes.

Just after my last entry, I received an email from our friends Chris and Ken Day - owners and guides with Emerald Air - that they would be in Fairbanks this past weekend with friends visiting from Texas. As luck would have it, Steve was off from work this weekend, so we were all able to meet up. They arrived in town on Saturday night, and we made plans to meet at Pikes Landing for the Champagne brunch on Sunday. Pikes is always a great choice, and we particularly love their Sunday brunch with delicious breakfast foods as well as ham, prime rib, shrimp, salmon, halibut and a lot more. It's a good place to go when you're starving and wearing clothes with some give.

As we were leaving the restaurant, Ken asked us if we had any plans for the day - and we didn't - so they invited us to tag along with them as Fairbanks tour guides. We were thrilled for the opportunity to show them around. I believe it had been 20 years since Chris and Ken had visited Fairbanks, and the other couple (Bob and Diane) had never been to the Interior.

The first place we drove was to the top of Murphy Dome. We wanted to show them the views from the top of the world - the Fairbanks world at least. It was mostly cloudy, but we were able to see the Alaska Range and the White Mountains clearly. It was cold up there - mostly due to 20mph winds at about 20 degrees. Steve and I were not dressed for the outing at all (no long underwear), thinking it would just be a brunch meeting. Nevertheless, we survived long enough for Ken and Bob (also photographers) to take some photos. We let them know that Murphy Dome was the perfect vantage point to see the northern lights from, and they planned to drive up there if the lights made an appearance. Unfortunately, Sunday night was too overcast for a light show. We found out today, that they did get to see the lights last night, and I'm thrilled for them.

After Murphy Dome, we drove to Cleary Summit to point out that vantage point for the lights. On the way to Cleary Summit, we made a stop at the pipeline viewing area for photos of both the oil pipeline and the ice tower across the highway.

The photo at left is of Bob and Diane. At right is the man-made ice tower created just about every year (except for last year) by Big John Reeves. The current height is 157 feet - from the bottom of ice cliff to top of tower. During the day, you can view the tower via web cam.

On the way back from Cleary Summit, I pointed out Silver Gulch Brewery and raved about the locally brewed ales to be had there. We made a u-turn in favor of a pint of beer and a couple of orders of their fabulous Tomato Ale Battered Onion Rings (Copper Creek Amber Ale and Bloody Mary mix season these rings). These onion rings have a spicy kick to them, which makes the beer go down a lot faster. We love Silver Gulch Brewery!

Our conversation on the way back to town turned to the Ice Art Championships and the ice park opening on February 26th. I remembered that I had the opportunity to photograph the artist/sculptors before the park opened in years past. With nothing to lose, we drove to the park to see if anyone was working. We were in luck, as a young couple was busy carving a large orca in the kiddie park.

After talking to them for a little while, we wandered through the rest of the kiddie park. We were thrilled to discover that some of the sculptures were illuminated. Steve and I, and Chris and Diane, wandered through the maze with its multi-color lit up walls. I'm very excited about coming back on opening day, and especially in a few weeks to see the multi-block creations. As always, I bought a season pass so I can enjoy the park many times.

Ice Kayak	Ice Eagle	Diane in Maze
Ice Maze	Kiddie Slide	Seal

As we were saying our goodnights later on that evening, we were invited us to accompany the four of them to Chena Hot Springs the next day (yesterday). We had such a fabulous time hanging out with them, we just had to say yes. I told them about the Joel Sartore lecture at UAF at 7:30pm and they decided to attend with us.

On the way to Chena Hot Springs Resort (CHSR), we stopped off at Tors Rocks Campground - our usual stop when we drive to CHSR. We walked around a bit, and snapped photos of the snow covered rocks and landscape, before driving the final stretch to the hot springs. (Photo at left: Chena River at the campground. Right: Bob and Ken coming down from a hill)

When we arrived at CHSR, we walked around the grounds and the springs before taking off on a short hike along the dogsled trail. Several times, we had to jump off the trail as a dogsled came upon us. Every sled had bundled up Japanese tourists riding on them, each with a huge grin from ear-to-ear, enjoying the wind on their face and the silence of the woods. I just had to snap a photo as they passed us! Alaska is a popular destination for folks from Japan in the winter. They love the springs and viewing the northern lights. Japan Airlines flies several non-stop flights to Fairbanks in the winter. I wish we could get non-stop service from Fairbanks to places in the Lower 48!

Hot springs and steam

Along the sled dog trail

Steamy stream

After our walk, we had lunch in the restaurant before taking a tour of the ice museum. The ice museum/hotel was originally built in 2003 (I have photos posted in my December 29, 2003 entry). In 2004 it began melting. It was costing $750/day to keep it from melting, so they decided to let it melt and build another ice museum within a structure that would protect it from the heat of the sun.

Originally, it was called a hotel, and for a substantial fee, you could book a room in the hotel. However, when they tried to classify it as a hotel after building the new structure, they were told that it could not be a hotel without a sprinkler system. That would have cost too much money to do, so they dropped hotel from the name and called it a museum. Ironically, there are no regulations against spending a night in a museum!

Our guide told us that there has only been one couple to spend the entire night in the ice museum. If you book a room in the museum ($500!), you are also given the key to a room in the hotel, where you can escape to if you can't tolerate the cold. And it was definitely cold! In fact, when we were there, it was colder inside the museum than it was outside.

The inside is so beautiful! Everything is made of ice. LED lights of all colors illuminate the different sculptures and are also inside portions of the walls. The most extraordinary thing (in my opinion) are the large chandeliers made of ice that are hanging from the ceiling. The lights change colors: magenta, blue, green, yellow.

There are four sleeping chambers in the museum. Each chamber has a double ice bed. There is a large piece of styrofoam on top of the ice base, like an ultra firm mattress. On top of the styrofoam are several caribou skins. We learned that caribou have hollow hair strands, and this helps to transfer heat. Sitting on a caribou skin - covered bar stool, kept our bottoms warm, and I'm sure helps when you're sleeping on ice.

Ice Museum	Ice Martini Glasses	Martini Glass Lathe	Through the front arch
Towards the bar from the rear	The ice bar	Ice Chess	Ice Chess
Polar Bear Bed	Emergency Exit	Ice "honey bucket"	Ice Chandeliers
Tree in the Christmas Room	Steve in the Igloo	Looking towards the front	Stairs to the tower
Ice Drinking Fish	Fireplace level with tables and chairs		Igloo
Bed in Christmas Room	Jousting Knights	Chris wrapped in caribou skins	Sunset on the way home

On the way home, we caught a nice sunset at the overlook on Hagelbarger Rd and then went back to the 7 Gables Inn (where they were staying) to relax a bit before driving over to UAF to see Joel Sartore speak.

Joel's presentation was very good, and the photos that he brought along were excellent. The lecture wasn't what I expected at all. While we were definitely entertained with his stories about working for National Geographic and traveling all over the world, the main topic of his lecture was the rapid growth of endangered species. Did you know that in ten years, 50% of the amphibians of the UK could be gone forever? It was very sobering to learn these statistics while viewing photos of the most gorgeous and colorful frogs I've ever seen.

We really need to take care of our planet so that our children and grandchildren, and so on, can experience the beauty of nature which surrounds us. If we don't get on the same sheet of music soon (both individuals and corporations), it's going to be too late.