Fairbanks Alaska Day 2 by Kenny & Kristen

On day two, we got up and decided to explore Fairbanks a bit. We walked down to a local coffee shop, which seems to be a pretty common thing here in Alaska (along with espresso) and grabbed some breakfast. I got a super good waffle made from who knows what kinda hipster ingredients (it was actually really good I loved it!) and Kristen got a coffee and granola parfait. From here we walked back to the hostel and packed up and headed out to the city. Our first stop was the university of Alaska. We drove around the campus which seemed really neat until we made it around to the research area. It turns out they have a huge rocket program and have their own launch facility for rockets (they are the only university owned and operated launching center).  We also stopped by the Museum of the north which had some great exhibits on the different areas of Alaska and how each section played a part in alaska's history. It was actually pretty great and very informative. You left with a feeling that your k-12 education didn’t teach you anything about alaska's importance in us History (which was fairly important really). After heading out from the museum, we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant called the basecamp eatery which had a special on “taters” Kristen got a bbq tater and I got a chicken bacon ranch tater. It was excellent! Here we devised a plan to head out to the Chena (Chetna In my terms) Hot springs which was about an hour or so away north east.  The drive was super nice and we got the opportunity to see some prime Alaska lakes and wilderness on the way. We arrived at the hotsprings around 3pm which gave us plenty of time to enjoy the outdoor natural (or mostly natural) hot spring and relax a bit. We also walked around the area because it is a full out resort. There are hiking and biking trails and there is even an “Aurorium” which I believe was for the winter. Essentially It was a wood cabin on the side of one of the mountains/hills in that area with on wall that was all glass. It is there so you can see the Aurora Borealis in the winter! It would be awesome and I think it will be a come back item for both of us. You could also see the Northern lights from the hot spring which i'm sure would also be awesome.  After the Springs we had a plan to run in the Midnight Sun Run in downtown Fairbanks. The race started at 10 and was only a 10k run. We made it back in plenty of time however we could not figure out where in the world we were supposed to meet for the race. Turns out it was not a loop route and you were supposed to meet at the finish line and take a shuttle to the beginning and we missed the last shuttle just barely =\ . So we didn’t make the run.  Not to be discouraged we tried to make the best of our night - and we did by finding this rarity! A Blockbuster!  After this we went to Walmart to look for anything we might need for the remainder of the week to finish off our night. We got some MRE’s for our hiking trips and then headed back to our Hostel this evening which was one of our most exciting places we would stay on this journey…A Tree house!!! The tree house was located at Sven's basecamp which was an awesome area with some good character. The treehouse was comfy and kept us dry and safe and fairly warm. There was a skylight that blocked out the sun but this was a pretty great place to stay. 

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