On Monday we headed to see Santa Claus but first we checked
out another ice museum, this one right in downtown Fairbanks. Each March, Fairbanks is home to the Ice
Sculpture World Championship. Ice
sculptors from all over the world come and compete in ice carving
contests. At the end of the event, some
of the sculptures end up in the ice museum, which was conveniently right next
to our hotel. Like the ice hotel in
Chena, they keep it cold inside all year so things don’t melt. We watched a short video on the contest then
had a chance to see some of the sculptures.
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| Downtown Fairbanks |
As it turns out the North Pole is just outside of Fairbanks
so we had to pay the jolly old guy a visit.
When we pulled up there he was, standing outside of his workshop in
North Pole, AK. The guy is much bigger
in person than we remembered. We went
inside his workshop and browsed the large Christmas themed gift shop before
heading back outside to see his reindeer.
After leaving the North Pole we headed up the road to an
interpretive roadside display on the Alaska pipeline. We learned that it takes about a week for oil
to travel the 800+ miles from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. We also were able to get up and close and
actually touch the pipeline which was also kind of cool. To round out the day we headed for Walmart to
buy some food for our trip the next day.
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| A "pig". Travels through the pipeline cleaning the pipeline and it also detects defects in the pipeline. |
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