North Pole and Fairbanks, AK

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Today we celebrated the 4th in three different ways.
First we headed into North Pole for their parade.  Below are a few pictures of what I considered the best parts of the parade.

It was a typical small town parade.  Lots of fun to watch!

Next we headed into Fairbanks for their 4th of July celebration held at Pioneer Park.  Pioneer Park has an air museum, the riverboat Nenana, Gold Rush Town, railroad museum, Native Museum, several stages and even a very large playground for the children.  So there was lots to see.

The Harding Car is very well preserved.  Below see the main area in the car. Then below that see the wash sink in the bedroom.

Pretty fancy for that era!

I can see that I failed to get a picture of the street in the gold rush town. I'll just have to say that I went in several of the buildings while Tic waited...

just where he was suppose to wait.  Hee Hee

 This totem pole was outside a trading post.

 This is the stern-wheeler SS Nenana.  It is the largest wooden riverboat built west of the Mississippi.

 The US Army Alaska Arctic Warrior Band entertained us for a full hour.  They were fantastic and you could tell they enjoyed themselves.  We took a video but blogger.com cannot handled videos at this time.

This is the outside of the Pioneer Air Museum.

This is outside of the Alaska Native Museum. It was too crowded to get pictures inside.

Above describes the sod roof structure below.

As part of the Pioneer Railroad Museum they had a small steam engine with 2 cars giving rides around the perimeter of the park.

We had a hamburger and some ice cream for lunch.  We sat around listening to several musical groups for a little while.

It was about 2:30pm when we decided to go the University of Alaska Museum of the North.  It came highly recommended by many.

 There was a large section on animals of Alaska dating back to the pre-ice age to current.

This case display some of the unique head-dresses made by the natives.

Upstairs was the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery.

We really liked this artistic sculpture of a bear. Below is another view of the bear.

There was a room called "The Place Where You Go to Listen".  It was intriguing. See the signs below describing what you hear.

The above sign was outside the room and the sign below was inside the room.

The sounds in the room were not rhythmic at all. Fascinating!

The pullover in the display case is made from large animal guts that have been stretched, oiled and dried. Then cut into strips and sewn together.  These were like their raincoats.

The remaining pictures are the the upstairs art part of the museum.

It was a fun filled day.  Fun celebrating July 4th in Alaska. Oh and there will NOT be any fireworks since it doesn't get dark enough to see them.