Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Wagon master stopped by to let us know we won, by default, the drawing for a night's stay at the 100+ year old resort at Chena Hot Springs Resort.  We will leave our RV behind at the campground and head out for the lodge which is about 60 miles from Fairbanks.

Today we visited the University of Alaska Museum of the North where there are natural and cultural exhibits.  It has over 1.4 million artifacts and specimens.  The Gallery of Alaska featured Blue Babe, a mummified 36,000 year old steppe bison from the Ice Age and the largest collection of gold nuggets on public display in Alaska. The bison carcass has a bluish color from when it was exposed to air.  There is a  room called "The Place where You Go To Listen."  It has a bench and screen and music that provides an ecosystem of sound and light that reverberate with the forces of nature.  The music and screen change with the tempo of nature, earthquakes, aurora borealis, etc.  We saw a movie explaining the mystery, science and beauty of the Northern Lights. 
It was a Chinese LEO (let's eat out) for lunch. It was OK until LeRoy came back saying another customer told the manager there were bugs in the silverware.  Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then back on the bus to see the Ice Museum downtown in Fairbanks.  It looked like an old movie theater converted into a room that had ice coolers on each wall.  Another movie about the ice Sculpting competition held in Fairbanks each March. Don't they know you should not show movies to tired tourists and then turn out the lights. Afterwards we viewed the display cases containing life size ice sculptures that are put into walk-in coolers of 20 degrees.  The ice in Fairbanks is called "blue diamond ice" because of its blueish color.  Professional ice carvers from over 27 ccountries participate in this competition.  Before we left the theater a young man gave us an ice carving demonstration
making a bird sculpture out of a small block of ice. 

Music on the river bank tonight was provided by Earl Hughes, his daughter and a friend (the guy from the Old Eldorado working mine).