Way Too Early
We decided to move on to Fairbanks today. It wasn't very far and Harding Lake didn't really have anything to offer. We need to do some more tire shopping tomorrow. After blowing out two of the Toyo tires that came with the van, we have decided to replace the other two as well. I don't know if is just bad luck or if they are just inferior tires. We also plan to replace the 12 year old spare tire, that we have needed twice so far. It was a never used tire that was original to Speedy and the rubber seems to be a bit brittle since it is beginning to develop sidewall cracks...and we have only run it about 250 miles.
We are way too early to be here. Denali National Park is only about 100 miles away and our reservations are about three weeks away. The vehicle problems and our decision to not do the Dempster highway after rushing to get there has put us far ahead of our loose schedule. Fortunately, there are quite a few good birding sites in the area and there are highways north and east of Fairbanks to explore, some places that were not originally on our radar. It should be interesting.
It was a rather quick drive from Harding Lake to Fairbanks, with only a stop at the Knotty Shop in Salcha. It is just a gift store, but constructed from logs which are filled with burls. Worth only a few minutes, which is all we gave it. We did not stop at North Pole, Alaska, which is south of Fairbanks. It seemed similar to the Knotty Shop and it was a sunday morning.
We first stopped at the Chena River State Recreation Area to check out the campground there. It is a park bordered by two main roads and right in an area of shopping malls. I suspect it was there first and the city expanded around it. It was more expensive than the other state campground and was mostly full, so we continued on to the Tanana valley Campground, right next to the fairground. It is less expensive than the SRA and has showers, water and a dump station...and it is a bit of a dump. The sites aren't bad and it is wooded, but the washroom and showers look like they haven't been cleaned this year. It's saving grace is that it is almost next door to the Creamer's Field Wildlife Sanctuary, one of Fairbanks best birding sites.
Our next order of business was to find good WiFi. The campground advertised Internet access... but not from our sites. It was too wet to stand around outside the office (did I mention today's rain?). We went off in search of a cafe with access. The College Coffeehouse was about a mile away and that is where we ended up.
On the way, we made a short stop at the local farmer's market, which is very small on Sundays. It is also open on Thursdays and Saturdays, which I expect are much larger. Most of the stalls were empty.
Neither Ellen's phone nor mine were working with respect to mobile data. I have been able to get some access on my iPad, but the phones were mysteriously dead. I called Google Project Fi support yesterday and they did as much as they could wirelessly, but with no success. I would have to find a WiFi connection and call again. I did and spent about three hours resurrecting wireless data access on both phones.
It turns out that mobile data in Alaska is pretty poor. There is very little cell service to begin with and what exists for data access is mostly very slow, old technology. Only one of the two carriers present in Fairbanks that support Project Fi has any support for the service required for Internet access. The phones are designed to seek out the strongest signal and that happens to be the one without service, so trickery that is not advertised is needed to force the phone to use the right one. Updates to the Speedy Journal may be few and far between while we are in Alaska.
After finally fixing phones, we drove over to the Creamer Fields, we only spent a short time there as it was beginning to rain as a thunderstorm passed by. It mostly missed us, but we didn't want to walk in open fields in a thunderstorm. We did get good views of Sandhill Cranes in their summer garb.
Now that things were appropriately damp, it was time to return to camp. We had dinner in our respective vans tonight, worked on the journal and photos. And uploaded as much as we could.
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