Fwinter Adventures

Fairbanks is always a pretty busy place, if you know where to look.  Even Fwinter, that weird season where it's fall in the rest of the planet and early winter up here, doesn't slow anything down.  I think it's a mix of factors, but mostly the isolation.  The next big town is 6 hours away, which really prompts people to make their own fun, but a lot of the people up here are a little nuts, too, which adds a delightful crunch to life.

The Fiber Festival takes place every October.  It is THE place for everything fiber-related.  Rabbit, sheep, muskox, reindeer, alpaca, yak, goat... if it has fur, someone in Fairbanks sells products made of it. There were lessons on how to string a warp on a loom, using a spinning wheel (or a drop spindle, your choice), using a knitting machine, harvesting rabbit wool, making felted animals...My favorite demo was the sheep shearing.  It was about 30 degrees outside and a guy walked us through shearing an Icelandic sheep, who wasn't too thrilled about the process and kept mean-mugging Jane. (In all fairness, all sheep look like they're mean-mugging everyone all the time.) We ate fries from the foodtrucks while we watched the sheep get stripped.

The only flaw in the day was Brenna had an allergy attack. After we pet the rabbits, she turned to me, all pink and uncomfortable, and rasped that she couldn't breathe and needed to go outside.  This was unexpected, because she's been around rabbits before without any issue, including earlier this summer.  Still, since we were knuckle-deep in bunny angora, that seemed the most likely cause. Her sisters were delighted and accused her of being allergic to happiness since she was allergic to puppies and now apparently also to bunnies.  However, we crushed this theory when we went to another event the next weekend at another location and she got all pink and raspy again, and this time there were no bunnies to be found.  Our current theory? She's allergic to pot.  The only thing the two events had in common was a couple of CBD sellers and several obvious users as well. (It's Alaska and marijuana is pretty prevalent up here.)  Well, at least I'll be able to tell if she ever tokes up.

One weekend, against my better judgment, I took the girls out to a corn maze on a real farm. The girls oohed at the cranes in the wheat fields and aahed at the rows of enormous pumpkins and stressed their way through the corn maze. I even let them pick a couple expensive but experience-points pumpkins to bring home for pies.  I regret making this last decision for two reasons: carrying thirty-eight pounds of pumpkin back to the van was not fun, and the big pumpkin survived all of three days before Echo rolled it off the window seat and killed it.

Halloween is always an adventure. This year we were all witches.  They all turned out pretty well, but I think B as Bellatrix was my favorite.  Actually, check that.  My van was my favorite.

There have been some small adventures. We hit the Museum of the North for their homeschool day, and then again for their to-scale Planet Walk. We went to the Children's Museum (where I may or may not have threatened to burn their flipflops if they wore them again before May) and the last day of the farmer's market. We had two more ER runs, one for a bead up the nose and the other because one of my kids got pink-eye the night before a very social and committed Thanksgiving (yes, not ER worthy, but it's shocking how few doctors are in the office at 5 on Thanksgiving Eve).  The bead was easily resolved with the coolest contraption I've ever seen--a little syringe with a balloon on the end.  Insert the plunger into the nostril and through the bead, depress the plunger to inflate the balloon, and *pop* no more beads in the nasal cavity.  She didn't even have to be admitted.

We were also lucky enough to be invited back to help our friends process their annual moose.  It was just as awesome as last year.  Good people, lots of work, and delicious moose to take home, which has to be one of the best goodie-bags I've gotten as an adult.

I also managed to sneak in one last kayak trip out to Chena Lake Recreation Area before the snow stuck for good.  It was gorgeous and quiet, with diving birds, beavers, and hawks against the fading gold of the birch.  I can't wait to get out there again next summer.  The aurora came back, and that was nice, too.

Then we dived into winter preparations.  We did the annual fwinter organization of the snow-gear, which is a fancy way of saying two tubs of gloves, snow pants, and boots vomited all over my living room and shuffled around until everyone had all the gear they needed for the day the white stuff came to stay.

Sadly, I also retired my faithful Milepost.  Three years and thousands of miles later, coverless, pages missing on both ends and many in-between crinkled and dog-eared, it's earned its reward.  Rest in peace, old friend.  I've already replaced you and started planning for next summer's fun, but you'll always be my first.

Sometimes you just need a random road-trip...

Every year my mother makes a trip up to visit us during the summer, and I squire her around the state.  This is convenient, because it gives me an excuse for a road trip down some random highway.

This year we went to Circle.  Not to be confused with the Arctic Circle, Circle is a small village where the mostly-unpaved Steese Highway dead-ends at the Yukon River.  Apparently original settlers thought they were on the Arctic Circle line and named the settlement accordingly…only for their descendants to discover they were off by about 50 miles—which might give some insight into how they ended up way out there in the first place.  Isolated is an applicable word. 

 We inadvertently chose the one week of the 40-Mile caribou hunting season for our little expedition; every turnout in the White Mountains was full of trucks and campers and caribou heads.  At one point we actually saw a pair of caribou, tottering shell-shocked across the road.  A white truck immediately pulled over on the side of the road and the driver jumped out, rifle in hand, to pursue them into the brush.  I still have mixed feelings about it.  

 The scenery was beautiful, though, as long as you didn't look at the road.

Up on some tundra around 40-Mile.

Low bush tundra cranberries.

Random flag, just in case you're unsure you're still in Alaska.

After four hours, we reached Circle, a handful of buildings on the southern bank of the expansive gray Yukon. The only public bathrooms were in the Washeteria, which also included showers and a couple of washing machines. The town store had RVs and airplanes next to the private outhouse in the parking lot, and a lone payphone in its own little shed off the side of the highway (a term which only loosely applies at this point).

I love that the instructions are on the side.  There were also knife-holes in the opposite wall where someone got bored while waiting for their knickers to dry.

So this hotel has been unfinished for years, and has become a landmark of the area.  It's even in The Milepost...but everything is in The Milepost.

We took a few minutes to take pictures and step in the largest river in Alaska.  The Yukon is 1400 miles long in Alaska, with an additional 580 miles in Canada. The couple of times I've seen it, the river has been calm and deceptively easy-going--but when you're the size of the Yukon you don't have a lot to prove, and just your size gives you some inertia.  It's a pretty impressive river.

In case you can't see it, the sign clarifies "NOT the Arctic Circle."

It's not a real road-trip unless someone throws a fit.

After a quick stop at the Washeteria, we drove home.  There was a brief stop in the creatively named Central, an equally small town with a mining museum.  We saw some grouse (or ptarmigan, I have no idea) and surprised a moose in a marsh.  It wasn't an exciting trip by most people's standards, but it ticked a lot of my boxes.  Hours spent with people I love on a road that most people never travel, with beautiful country and a couple of laughs and a moose...it doesn't get much better than that.

Because when your shoes get dirty of course you take them off.