North Pole, AK

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Today we move from Tok to North Pole, AK. Yes we are headed to Santa's home.

As we head towards our new destination, we are driving near the Tanana River.  

Not long before North Pole, we stopped at The Knotty Shop know for its burl wood creatures. 

The mosquitoes here in Alaska are nearly this big.  Hee Hee
 

Even burls used for a moose head.
 

These burl logs were on the front porch of the building.
 

Here we are at Riverview RV Park in North Pole.  We will be staying here for 1 week.  This will be our home base as we travel around the area.  Snug.

Here's proof we actually made it to the North Pole on July 1, 2017.

 It is warm today at 72 degrees F. Amazing how warm it is.

The visitors center was very informative.  Notice it is a sod roofed log house.  They also told us about a sod roof neighborhood that we would not have found without their help.

In case you did not read in a previous post, sod roofs have several benefits especially for log homes.  The roofs are first covered with birch bark which waterproofs it.  The sod is a relativity efficient insulator in the winter.  Also the weight of the sod on the roof helps compress the logs, which reduces the air spaces/drafts between the logs.  Below are pictures of several of the sod roof homes in this little neighborhood.

Notice this is the laundry.  We did not go in because we were not sure if it was a public laundry or not.

Next we went to Santa Claus' House.  This huge Santa was outside near the parking lot.

Of course we had to get our picture taken in front of Santa.

This is Santa's House.  The decorations on the sides of the building are actually painted and glazed ceramic tiles.  It is beautiful!

The plaque above is talking about the red & white pole in the picture below.

 This is Santa's official post office.

The Screaming Weasel is a very unique building that has local artists work on display.   We had wanted to go in but it was closed.  Another day.

Sunday & Monday July 2 & 3, 2017
It has rained off and on most all day both days.  We have not done any sight seeing yet.  We've only gone grocery shopping and a little research on what route we want to take after we leave Denali.  Tomorrow is July 4th.  We plan to participate in local celebrations in both North Pole and Fairbanks.