We had planned a few days of our trip to be in the Fairbanks area. So that morning we arose and made a few phone calls.
The first was to the MSI Salvage Yard, where we called in for pricing on the items we forgot to inquire about; bus mirrors and grab rails. Unfortunately the bus mirrors were way too expensive, but the grab rail was and acceptable price. We decided we would swing back by there later that day.
We also called and found out there was one Alyeska Tire. I had wanted to check the torque on the lug nuts after the horrible roads we had been over. Aleyeska said they would be happy to check them for free. 😊
We started off utilizing the Costco gas pump after our morning wake-up steps. I hadn’t shot a photo of Laura fueling up The Ohana to match our old Serenity one, so I did it then.
Man those RVs are different creatures!
Next we found a really nice (and enclosed!) wash bay we could pull The Ohana into. She had definitely earned herself a bath.
Next on our list, there was one place I had to show Laura from my visit before- The Comic Shop! It’s exactly what it sounds like, plus being a really cool hobby shop carrying all kinds of board and card games.
Remember, I am a huge board game geek- so going to a quality gaming store is a really big treat for us. 🤓😎
FYI – Years ago, before I had gotten back into the gaming scene for the first time since I was a kid, I came here. It was right before my big trip to the woods to clear the border, and I was thinking that Magic was the way to get back into the gaming scene.
I bought a couple of pre-made duel decks and traveled out to the middle of nowhere. Nobody ended up playing me, they were too exhausted and busy to use their brains at night. But, I got really familiar with the game by reading the cards in the evenings.
While we were at The Comic Shop, we noticed it was conveniently placed next to a a restaurant called AK Buffet.
Have I mentioned before how much we miss buffets? Homer has NONE.
Also since we changed our diet, have I mentioned how much we miss generic Chinese Food?
A LOT.
Laura was hungry, and as with official birthday tradition (Actual Birthday Day Being Tomorrow), I let her pick if she wanted to go.
She said yes to the buffet, and she also decided that it was officially time to break our diet.
It was interesting, there was no actual buffet and we were seated very far apart from other diners. When the server approached our table, we would wear our mask, thank her, and then when she left take it back off.
So we each ordered a plate, and that came with egg drop soup. That was the first time we had eggs in the last 7 months!
When the plates arrived we were shocked. I had ordered sesame chicken and Laura had ordered beef and broccoli. The plates were huge and heaping! We were amazed by how cheap and plentiful the food was. It was awesome Chinese food.
As Laura ate her food I remember her saying, “I can’t believe how much beef is in this, I find myself wanting more broccoli.” 😆 Which is crazy, because that is exactly the opposite of what we used to go for in our previous life.
Laura and I swear we took a photo of the plates, but cannot find the photo for the life of us. If we do, I’ll update the post with it here. 😉
Needless to say, we didn’t even come close to finishing it. We grabbed a few to go boxes before we left and knew we had travel food for days.
Laura still had so many food plans for her birthday that I wasn’t sure if we were going to survive this experience. 😵
After eating our fill we headed to Alyeska Tire.
While we were in the office I decided to ask the sales clerk if they had tire pressure recommendations for my rig. I had my own understanding and opinion, but these guys did tires all day long so I decided not to be too proud to ask if they had any advice.
I explained to them that I had been bleeding air from the rear tires all along our trip. This was due to the weight on the rear tires, combined with the long distances we were driving, caused the rear tires to heat up. As the tires heated up the oxygen in them would expand, causing the tire pressure to rise. The gentleman behind the desk recommended Nitrogen.
😨 What did he just say? Nitrogen? What magic be this?
So I double checked if I had heard him correctly, “Nitrogen?”
“Yep,” he confirmed and proceeded to explain that many Alyeska branches in Alaska (Not Homer) offer Nitrogen Tire Filling. Nitrogen is much more stable with temperature change, and reacts an extremely minimal amount to it. He also explained that, especially in Fairbanks, many people have problems with the extreme temperature changes in the winter. This can even cause the tires when cold enough to lose their bead to the tire rims, leaving them completely flattened. This seemed like an excellent solution. 🤔
So I asked him how often, and how, would I need to check my tire pressure? He answered that I wouldn’t anymore, unless one of my tires got a hole in it. 🤯
More magic!
He did advise us to always let a shop that is working on it know the tires had nitrogen in them. If I did get a hole in the tire, I could put oxygen in to get it where it needed to go; it would just simply delude the nitrogen purity and therefore the tire would go back to it’s temperature fluctuations.
So… I chuckled and said it all sounded amazing, but finally had to know how much this magic Nitrogen solution was going to cost me?
$40. 😲
Okay! How long will it take?
Twenty to thirty minutes. 😃
Bullseye! 🎯 We were sold!
Laura and I looked at each other and said, “Alright! Let’s go Nitrogen!”
Here is the nitrogen machine.
First you bleed the air out of the tires, then the machine fills them with Nitrogen, sucks it all out in case there is any oxygen left in the tire, then refills it with pure nitrogen.
They put green valve stem caps on to let other mechanics know the tires were full of nitrogen. We could always switch them out for black, but decided to roll with it for the time being.
Before we knew it, we were pumped up with Nitrogen and headed to our next stop, the salvage yard.
We were on a mission to score a bus grab rail.
Shortly thereafter- we had the rail that we planned would go outside the camper entry door.
Next we headed to find water. This was the first time, minus out of our own tap at home, that we had to get water somewhere other than a dump site.
Since a lot of people live in dry cabins up in the Fairbanks area, they have water shacks in the area. These are mostly for high volume fillings of water, but the did have a pump with a fill handle designed for smaller jug filling. It was a cheap price for a lot of water, so with that we were able to finally fill up!
Since we were close, I wanted to take Laura to an area that I had an awesome memory of; The Pump House.
After I got back from “the woods”, a friend of mine took me to this place. I remember eating and sitting on the deck, next to a huge beautiful river, where people in kayaks rowed right up to the river banks to come eat, and float plans glided down into the water right by us. It was a pretty amazing moment at the time.
So we drove over for a preview of the main place I wanted to take Laura for a meal for her Birthday. It was just as pretty as I remembered it.
We wanted to find a good spot to touch the water and put our feet in it.
On our way back to The Ohana, we met some people interested in the checking it out in the parking lot. I gave them a quick showing and hooked them up with a bumper sticker for the blog. I guess they host a place you have to 4X4 out to on The Baja Peninsula, and asked us to swing by if we made it down that way. Sweet! 😁
They also advised us to go across the river and there was a nice spot to enjoy the water. So that’s what we did. On the way across the river I spotted another familiar sight. On my prior visit I remember seeing a river boat that was also a restaurant. How cool!
We took the first right after the bridge and started following the road.
As soon as we came to a turn we arrived at a nice little boat access ramp tucked in between a hotel and another river deck restaurant called Pike’s Landing. We parked and finally got to splash our feet in the water for a moment.
To the right of the boat launch spot, behind the hotel was a neat little mini golf setup for guests. Between it and the water was a small driving range shack (in pic below on right) that allowed the user to wack a golf ball across the river onto the Love Alaska spot. Also in the shack there was a bucket of “free” rocks to throw in the water. 😄
A truck pulled in wanting to launch a boat, so we decided to follow the river down and see if we could check out the river boat we saw earlier. We were in luck, we found a beautiful little spot down by the bridge.
When we arrived there was a local woman letting her dogs play in the water sitting on the bench there. We chatted with her while playing with her dogs for a little bit and playing in the water.
In conversation, we asked her if we should end up going to Pike’s Place to eat. She gave us a very serious “No, go to The Pump House- It’s way better”. 😃
Good- without her even knowing I was hoping for that answer, our plans were affirmed.
After a nice long visit at the river, we decided we could try and muster up the conviction to eat again, and shortly thereafter we were sitting on the deck at The Pumphouse.
We ordered, and while we were waiting something happened. I had left my mask sitting on the table beside me, and the wind blew it right over the rail.
So I had to go to the end of the big ol’ deck and traverse my way along below to get it back.
With mission accomplished our food arrived shortly after. Laura got something she had been dying for- fancy macaroni and cheese, and I got the staple burger and fries.
The food was amazing! But you know what it made me realize, I don’t miss hamburgers. We are completely happy with our Beyond Burgers.
We were already full. But our lovely waitress recommended dessert, and having broke our diet we had to oblige. We asked her if we could see the options, and a little bit later she came out with a huge platter containing a piece of each of their options. They were so immaculate we had to ask if they were actually real, and she answered yes. In the end we settled on an amazing peanut butter and chocolate pie, with a scoop of good old fashioned ice cream. It was amazing, and they gave it to us on the house when they found out it was Laura’s Birthday!
In the end, we had an awesome meal and a great time, and the price was super considerable compared to back home!
We decided a walk along the boardwalk next to the restaurant was in order afterwards, hopefully we could walk off a bit of the food! Shortly after I shot this picture of looking up at the trees as we were sprawled out on the grass in the lawn staring at the sky.
Once the food let a hold of us enough to start operating again, we decided it was time to head towards our next destination- Chena Hot Springs!
The first leg of the road to Chena is a really bad road, suffering from massive frost heaving.
We made our way through it carefully with traffic tailing us, until it finally cleared up and we entered the state park before Chena. We traveled our way looking for a good spot to land for the night. We found the sweetest little lake spot.
Unfortunately, it was right next to a gun range. With people currently exercising their trigger fingers, we decided to move on down the road to hopefully find a more peaceful spot.
Further down the road we pulled over to watch this scene. There were these two moose in this little lake. The one deeper out in the water at first appeared to be headless as he stuck his head down deep and held it there. He would then emerge and spray water out of his mouth and shake his head around scattering water all around him.
I’ve seen a lot of moose, but this was the first time I had seen one do this! 🤣
It was a gorgeous moment, but here, I’ll zoom in on that moose a little more for you!
“Oh- Geeze Carl, You’re Embarrassing us!”
Laura’s goal is to see a beaver, which I was not aware of until this point. So we went and peered into some bile up in hopes it might yield some magic beaver moment for her.
Nope, no National Geographic sightings moments occurred on that one- so we walked back to the rig and got back at it.
As we got closer to Chena we exited the state park, and realized Chena was a privately owned operation. We saw traffic heading the other way as we arrived.
Well, we arrived at Chena at 10 PM- so it was closed. We crossed the bridge and drove around took scope out the scene for a moment.
Not sure we could stay there for free- we headed back a little ways down the road. I had seen a sweet little pullout right by the river, but ironically one of the cars we had seen driving the other way had claimed it for their own.
I went a little bit further though and found us a really nice spot, also right by the river and tucked away from the road behind a nice wall of trees.
Here was Kalcifer’s 🔥 view of the river that night.
With our trip to Chena we had added another 61 miles on our trip, putting us at 1,045 Miles.
Once again we got to be spoiled by drifting off to the sweet sound of another river. 🏞️
Geoff Murphy 9/3/2020