Day 30 Fairbanks (8th September)

Today was a fill in day as we before flying out for Montreal.

To start with we went downtown and walked around a little (0°C) until we were able to catch the bus for North Pole. This is a town about 18km out of Fairbanks. The Mayor of North Pole is Santa Claus (he legally changed his name on being elected).

We stopped at Santa's house and went in for a look around. It is filled with Christmas trees covered in ornaments and lots of other Christmas paraphernalia. We even met Santa. He was a lovely gentleman. As school had gone back in Alaska most visitors to Santa's house were adults (grandparents). This meant that they got to sit on Santa's knee. In two incidents Santa had the husband turn the phone camera to video (while grandma sat on his lap) and spoke to the Grandchildren about his friendship with grandparents and how he knew of the children's behaviour.

When we got to speak to him a queue had started to form so we just had a photo taken sitting on his lap. We then went out to the Reindeer Academy. There were several reindeer resting in an enclosure (they had just been doing practice flights keeping fit for Christmas Eve J).

We then caught the bus back to the city. Hopping on another bus we headed out to the University of Alaska -Fairbanks campus. We went to the Museum but as it was quite costly we decided to continue on.

Next stop was Creamer's Field Wetland bird refuge. This was originally a large and successful dairy farm (how appropriate for a dairy family to have the name Creamer) until trade agreements about 30 years ago put them out of business. Shortly after it was realised as to the value as a sanctuary for birdlife and other wildlife so it was purchased by the city. We managed to see a large number of Canadian geese, ducks, some small birds and some cranes. A number of walks had been developed as well as a number of hides along the walks.

We headed back to the city dinner for a rest before departing for the airport at 10.30 pm. Our flight was at 1.15am so it was going to be a long next day. The flight left relatively on time. Interesting flight crew. They were all older than us (though not sure about the pilot as we did not see him).