When kids all over the world address their Christmas letter to Santa Claus, it gets sent to Rovaniemi in Finland, probably the closest inhabited village to the actual North Pole, where a team of people respond on Nick's behalf. Except for kids in the US that is, where letters to Santa Claus get forwarded to North Pole, Alaska - a suburb of Fairbanks. Nothing like having to get out the reindeer and the sleigh or anything remotely like that, you can just pull off the expressway and park your SUV at the door. And if meeting Santa Claus isn't exciting enough for the little tackers, you can always take them next door to McDonalds for a Happy Meal afterwards, or the KFC or the Subway across the street if Ronald has had a tiff with Rudolf. It's not even in the north of Alaska, and certainly not in the Arctic Circle.
We didn't even slow down for a photo, but we can assure you that all of the light poles are painted like red candy canes.
Instead we started heading southwards for the first time, down the Richardson Highway towards the Wrangell-St Elias National Park, which is the largest National Park in the US (although the St Elias mountain is actually in Canada).
Stopped at Delta Junction about 2 hours outside Fairbanks for a coffee and driver change, and bought some lunch at a fuel stop where the waitress recommended the brownies over the choc chip cookies because - "they are fresh, they were baked yesterday". Then it was south down the glacier carved Copper Valley, and across the Alaska Range, with glaciers, rivers and mountains on all sides. It's also peak wildflower season, and the roadsides were festooned with colour which made Mandy's day. Stopped frequently for photo ops, and eventually to eat the lunch we had purchased earlier.
Had a pit stop at Meiers Lake where we had a long conversation in the cafe with a local lady who produced a basket of porcupine quills, showed us around her historic collection of furs and fur clothing, and talked about her life.
About 2pm we arrived in Gakona, and pulled in to the historic Gakona Lodge, built in 1906 and still operating. Luckily the sheets have been changed since then, but the lodge and the cottages have a wonderful rustic charm about them. Not quite sure how Brendan and Rachel ended up with the cottage with the large TV and cable instead of us - I think that the hand was quicker than the eye.
After dropping our stuff and asking some directions, we sprayed each other with 40% DEET to ward off the hoards of mosquitoes, and headed up the Tok (toke) Road some 50 miles to the entrance to the national park. The park road itself goes in for 92 miles from the entrance before it peters out, and from there you take a flight to the biggest of the glaciers, so you can get some idea of the immense size of the park. We only went in some 20 miles, as the road gets progressively worse the further you go, listening to the audio CD that we picked up at the ranger station as we went, and then took a walk down one of the trails for about an hour. Given that the trail ends at the top of the mountains in the distance, we certainly weren't aiming to do it all, but we got to see lots of the mountains and glaciers, and add another national park to Brendan and Rachel's tally. At each one they have to get a selfie at the entrance sign as proof of their conquest, and a framed photo from each park is hung on their lounge room wall. It's a very impressive collection.
After all of that, we arrived back at the lodge about 8, and drove straight to the restaurant door in a vain attempt to avoid the mosquitoes waiting for their dinner. The lodge has been recently purchased by a young couple from Texas who are now attempting to run a snow lodge in Alaska while home schooling their two primary age children. Now that's a sea-change. As well as tourists, they also have a steady trade in workmen tending the Alaskan pipeline who stay in the area for weeks at a time, though they do tend to eat the restaurant out of things, and you can't just go down to the supermarket here to replenish.
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