Sharp's Travels

We slept in this morning till 7 am. It’s our free day so as soon as we got ready we headed to the Alaskan Wood Bowl Co. You could watch the manufacturing process through their in store windows. They could even engrave lettering or pictures in the bottom of the bowls.

Our next stop was the Alaskan Raw Fur Co. Every year they go from one remote cabin and village to the next to collect the winter’s harvest of furs. They have a wide selection of tanned furs, the timber wolves, wolverine, beaver, coyote, mink, otter, fox, lynx, ermine, rabbit, and on and on. It was quite a site. They also sold material there. They have some beautiful wild life prints. I ordered a bird print. As soon as they get their order in they will ship me the yardage I ordered.

We came back to the 5th wheel and had lunch and then we were off again with a couple from our group (Bill and Linda Shaw) to check out the Community Museum. They had an exhibit on the Flood of “67” here in Fairbanks. We also took in the Dog Mushing Museum. They had exhibits of dog sleds and the history of mushing in Alaska. They displayed posters and information on the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and the well-known Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

We went to the Visitors Center to pick up information on the surrounding area and take a few pictures of all the beautiful flowers there.

The highlight of our afternoon was our visit to the Ice Museum. We were shown a movie clip that shows you the process from start to finish of sculpting ice. They had large glass fronted walk-in display cases that maintained a constant temperature of 20 degrees. One had a dog team and sled. The mushers head was hollowed out so you could put your head through for a picture. They also had a log cabin and other animals carved in ice. When we were done taking pictures they gave a demonstration of carving the ice. He carved a bird on a branch in no time at all with a chain saw and grinder to get more detail.
We also saw Dr. Matt Nolan form the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Institute of Engineering. He had just returned from the McCall Glacier in the Brooks Range with core samples taken from the glacier. They will be doing all kinds of testing to find out weather changes throughout thousands of years. At the glacier there are no trees or plants life to make any tests on. They may find evidence of these things trapped in the glacier.

We had one last stop to make before heading back to our campground and that was the Botanical Gardens. The flowers were beautiful. Gay got lots of pictures.

At 6:15pm we all carpooled over to Susan Butcher’s home for a catered in Salmon & Prime Rib dinner and a movie on Susan’s life. They had a big tent set up where they served our food, which was delicious and then we got to move to the theater tent to watch the movie. Jessie Royer and Brent Sass, both mushers, were there to tell us about their experiences running the Iditarod Race. We were given an opportunity to go out and visit the dogs and even hold the 4wk old puppies. We all got a group picture in the giant dog sled before heading back to our campground. I purchased Susan’s children’s book titled Granite and had her husband and daughter sign it for us. We had a great evening.

For pictures of the day see album: Fairbanks 7-16-08