The thermometer dangling out the window says minus 5C.
The coach sets off later than originally intended but it did mean we could get a little bit more sleep, having been staring out the window at 5am.
First stop was Nenana. This was described as a comfort stop but toilets were exceptionally difficult to find - the public ones, at the opposite end of the town to where the bus stopped (bad planning), were closed (good planning, after all). Eventually most folks went to the staff toilet in the general store close to where the bus stopped (perhaps the driver should have mentioned these!)
What's at Nenana apart from closed toilets? It is the home of the Nenana Ice Classic - not a competition of ice skating, nor ice carving, it is Alaska's coolest lottery (according to their Web Site located at http://www.ptialaska.net/~tripod/).
For an entry fee of $2, you have to guess the day AND the exact time when a 5-legged tripod [sic] located in the middle of the frozen River Tanana will break through the melting ice. On breaking through it tugs on a rope connected to a clock and bell which stops and rings, respectively, at the exact moment - pretty exciting stuff, eh?
We bought our entry ticket at Coghill's General Store, described on its Web site as "Your one stop shopping" though "your ONLY stop shopping" might be nearer the mark - I shouldn't knock them because they were kind enough to let us use their facilities. Buying our ticket at Coghill's we treated as the fee for using their toilet. If you're interested we picked 20th April at 3.25pm. If it wins it will be the earliest since 1917, the previous early one being in 20th April 1940 at 3.27pm.
Next stop was on the approach to Fairbanks, in a lay-by, to view over the Tanana River down to the Alaska Range of Mountains with Mt McKinley just visible 200 or so miles away.
The next stop, and we haven't got to lunchtime yet is Fred Mayer Supermarket and an opportunity to buy any essentials that we won't be able to get at our resort. Indeed if we were aware of the prices at Chena we would have bought a lot more stuff!
Having stocked up for the rest of the day we set off on the last leg of our outward journey, on to Chena Hot Springs (pronounced Cheena). The preamble from our "courier" informed us that most activities at Chena were expensive, but last year (1999) some things were free, such as hiring cross-country skis and snowshoes. Not any more, though, both are now charged at $25 per day or $7.50 per hour. The year 2000 prices for activities are included to help you budget.
We arrive at the resort at about 2.00pm and wait to be allocated rooms, which happens at 5.00pm - Yup, three hours later. The room is in Moose Lodge, so called because there is a Moose in the lobby - stuffed of course.
The room is unbearably hot at about 29C - a result of the under-floor state-of-the-art geothermal heating. We find out how to cool the room down - turn the thermostat down, which approximately controls the flow of the water in the pipes, which still have to cool down. Opening the window to let the - 10C cold air blow over the floor to cool the pipes is the way to do it. The offshoot of all this is that the room is always either too hot or too cold. If that is state-of-the-art then I'm glad it's not a primitive heating system.
Chena Hot Springs is a kind of health/activity resort - Web page at http://www.chenahotsprings.com. There is a health giving hot spring that feeds into an outdoor bathing pool with a Jacuzzi next to it. There is an aircraft landing strip adjacent to the resort and the accommodation is in lodges scattered about the site. A recreation centre houses pool tables and slot machines and is being expanded in 2000 to have some computerised full size golf driving range/course thing installed. This room also has other slot machines dispensing hot drinks and snacks - complete with microwave to hot things up a bit.
There are several trails around Chena, which you will learn more about later.
Anticipating late nights - the time to observe the aurora from here is from 10.00pm to about 3.00am - a few hours sleep seems like a good idea.
So it was that at 9.45pm, togged up in multiple layers of clothing, fleece hat and scarf, fleece jackets and wind proof coats we head off to the landing strip - the aurora viewing area - for the evenings entertainment.
Like last night it all started with a faint auroral arc across the sky gradually developing and changing into curtains and sheets to our left, the right, in front and on occasion overhead. Sometimes the curtains became very bright and threw up streamers and other times everything looked faint but with delicate structure.
To prevent icing up completely we take occasional trips to the recreation centre for a warm - there is a room dedicated to watching the aurora which faces North and has a floor to ceiling window for viewing, but you miss so much of the faint stuff in there. These occasional trips don't last long, fearing that that crucial impressive display may occur while your being wimpish and getting warm.
Continued attempts to photograph the aurora are scuppered when the mirror of one of the cameras freezes up during a 30 second exposure, so at 12.15 it is taken back to the room for the evening. After defrosting and a hot drink we go out again.
At about 1.00am and -19C (about -2.5F) we get more aurora with lots of spikes but this soon dies down and there is a long period of inactivity, so we opt to call it a day at about 2.00am. After de-layering it's bed about 2.30.
Goto Day 5: Chena Hot Springs - Bear Paw Butte Trail
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