Making the best of two days in Fairbanks

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Trip Start May 16, 2006 Previous
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  Fairbanks, Alaska, United States
Monday, June 5, 2006

As I mentioned earlier my truck cap or "canopy" as it's called here, has issues with the latch, namely it won't open. I'm forced to stay an extra day here so that they can have someone look at it on Monday. If they can't fix it the nearest Snugtop dealer is in Edmondton, Alberta... so that's trouble. If I can't get into the back of the truck, I can't sleep there or get at the camp stove and all that stuff. It's bad.

I have a contingency plan, though, I fished my tent out through the little window in the back and if worse comes to worse I can live without the camp stove (since it won't fit out the window even if I could reach it) and when I'm camping I'll just eat cold food.

Fairbanks closes down on the weekends. There's nothing happening and no one around

Again with the sign

. I wonder if they are around and I just don't know where to look? Bakersfield was like that, and even Pittsburgfh to a certain extent. It just looked dead, but if you went the right places it was fun. Either way, the guide books are no help and the people at the front desk only know the touristy stuff. Scott Bowers told me about some bar he went to, I'm gonna check it out tonight.

I went to the Chena Recreational district today and Bucket and I did some hiking around the chena river and the Granite Mountain. Also today...it snowed. Weird. Snow on June 4. They keep telling me that it's not normally this cold and they blame all the bad weather on the "Japan Current". I told them we blame all *our* bad weather on the Alaska Current. This seemed to bother them. However, I made up for this fault by telling them that in NYC all the bad weather is blamed on Canada. They seemed to like that. They hate Canada here because Alaska and Canada both have claims to some natural gas in eastern AK/ western Yukon. Since Natural gas is, well, a gas, it's connected on both sides of the border and no one really knows who has the right to pump it out of the ground. There's a ton of "Canada my ass, it's Alaska'a gas" bumper stickers.

Also, "Maybe Joe was right" is very popular. Joe Volger was a local hero who campaigned for Alaska to become it's own country and was..some claim...assassinated to shut him up in the 90's. Read the in depth discussion here. When I didn't know who Joe Volger was last night at the hotel bar for dinner, the bartender looked at me in amazement and disgust. Am I wrong? Is this guy more famous than I think?

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow my cap will get fixed and then I get to decide where to next.

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Bucket in his new backpack	Can you see it? It's snow	More Beaver-ness	Never see this roadsign in CA
The Chena River	The forget-me-not	The top of Granite Mountain	Top of Granite Mountain II

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