A Toast to Alaska

It's day 3 in Alaska and we've had quite the adventure! We spent the last two days in and around Fairbanks. The first day we went to the Chena Hot Springs Resort where you'll never guess what we did! We went to an ice museum!! It was amazing! A barn-sized building with a constant temperature of 25 degrees held tons of incredible ice sculptures. Easily the 'coolest' place we've seen so far. We were the only people on a tour and got to see life sized knights jousting, an ice leopard and even an ice bar! We had cocktails in a glass made entirely out of ice!! Seriously if anyone wants to take a short plane ride (6-7hours) to Alaska it's definitely worth checking out. After that we headed back to Fairbanks for a relaxing night of dinner and checking out a few shops in town.
The next day we drove towards Denali National Park for a view of North America's tallest mountain, Denali. Unfortunately it was a fairly cloudy day so we didn't get to see the top...but we will someday soon! Shortly after leaving Fairbanks, we got a bit of a surprise when we stumbled across a bar that the Vedvig clan had visited a few years ago; Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn! We immediately pulled over to take a few pictures and look through the risqué novelty items they had for sale. We even found the dollar bills signed and stapled to the ceiling from a few Wisconsinites!! (wink, wink, the Vedvig/Keehn Family)What are the odds! What was really unique is that Fairbanks (one of the most northern cities in Alaska) had very little snow. Most of the snow had melted already but as we headed south we drove though a massive valley between two mountain ranges and quickly things changed. We went from a sunny spring day in Fairbanks to a snowy, cloudy day as we drove past Denali National Park. There was snow everywhere! Even stranger yet, as we continued to drive south we reached a point where all of the snow just disappeared. We mean gone! Adam and I looked at each other and said, "wait....where did all the snow go?". We had driven the past 3 hours in a winter wonderland and now we were back to spring! Oh Alaska, you tricky, fickle lady. After that we headed towards Talkeetna, about half way between Anchorage and Fairbanks, where we stopped for the night. We stayed at an RV park close to an airstrip so we could watch planes and helicopters coming and going all afternoon. Most of the shops downtown were still closed but we found a brewery that was open and serving dinner so we stopped in. We never thought it was that late until we checked the time and it was 10:30 with the sun still up! We'll have to get used to that pretty quick. As for today we plan to keep heading south and possibly go canoeing at Nancy Lake. It should be a great day!

-the A-Team