Fairbanks Day 1 - Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center [260628]

(Posted 260819) - Most of our first full day in Fairbanks was spent at the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center.

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Tom woke up around 7:30 Sunday morning, and in typical fashion when there's some new silly dilemma unfolding, his mind started spinning and he couldn't go back to sleep so he started doing research online.  The latest issue is that we've been running low on the WD-40 Dry Lube that we use to lubricate our black tank valve.  Normally we'd just pick up a new can at the next Walmart we passed, and walmart.com had shown us that the Fairbanks store supposedly had it in stock.  But when we were there last night, there were none on the shelf.  We also noticed two other things at the time: 1) the photo of the Dry Lube can online didn't say "with PFTE" on it like we remember our can saying, and 2) Walmart did have a WD-40 Silicone lubricant on the shelf that sounded like it'd be better suited for the materials in the valve and was cheaper.

His research revealed that manufacturer phased PFTE out of their product line about a year ago, so its actually not possible to buy the Dry Lube with PFTE any more at all (although they claim the current formulation "is just as good").  A search of TOWB (the Travato Facebook Group) seemed to show that a few folks had mentioned using the Silicone lubricant in their valves, but there was nothing conclusive about which was better.  We decided to create a post to ask the question directly, and wait a day to see if there were any compelling responses.

We got up around 9, and after our morning routine went back into Fred Meyer to finish our grocery shopping and for Tom to buy a donut (Tom has fond memories of the Fred Meyer donuts from the summer in college he spent in Redmond, WA interning at Microsoft).  Unfortunately, the donut case was completely empty - apparently the baker doesn't work on Sundays, so there are no donuts.  😞  However, we managed to score a few more BOGO Yerba Mates so he was happy - and Christine found some BOGO Sabra Hummus as well - so it was a good shopping morning all around in the end.

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We drove 1.2 miles out to the Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center.  The Center was quite interesting, starting with the grounds outside that had an interesting/amusing sculpture of baby ravens made out of nails.

Also on the grounds (next to the main Center) is a pre-1910 cabin still on the original site on which it was built.

Although not technically part of the Center, the Antler Arch is right next door.

The solar panels on the house across the river caught our eye.  Being so far north in Alaska, the solar panels have to be mounted at much more vertical angles than we're used to seeing in the lower 48 in order to catch the sun.

Inside the Center, this display greeted us with Fairbanks' current stats for Sunrise (3:05 a.m.), Sunset (12:43 a.m.), Day Length (21 hours, 36 minutes, and 13 seconds), and Daylight Loss (-3:13 from previous day; days have been getting shorter since the solstice on June 21).

The main exhibit hall had a series of life-size dioramas that explored local life (for both people and animals) throughout the seasons of the year, starting with summer . . .

. . . moving into autumn . . .

. . . and finally winter.

There were also a few displays on the history of the Alaska Pipeline, as well as a few rooms dedicated to the local First Nation population and their culture.

The Center also had 7 different 30-60 minute long films that played throughout the day in their theatre.  We watched two of the longer ones:  "America's Wildest Refuge" (about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and "Aurora: Fire in the Sky" (about the myth, legend, and science behind the northern lights).

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (newspaper) provided complimentary copies of the Sunday paper in the Center for visitors to take with them.  We flipped through one, and noted that the comics section - in addition to many of the familiar syndicated comic strips - also contained a local one that we had never seen before: Tundra that according to Wikipedia is written, drawn, and self-syndicated by a cartoonist out of Wasilla, AK.  (We've actually been seeing quite a bit of Tundra-based merch - T-shirts, mouse pads, etc. - in the gift shops, and some of them have been quite humorous!)

We finished browsing all the displays, etc. about 45 minutes before the Center closed at 6, so we fetched our laptops from the T42 and used the Center's Wi-Fi for those last 45 minutes, doing trip planning and finishing and publishing blog post #10.

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On the way back to Fred Meyer for the night, we stopped by the Shell station with the free water/dump facilities we were planning on using later to check them out.  Other than the fact that there was only a single faucet available that had to be used for both potable and flushing/rinsing purposes, everything looked fairly as expected.

We didn't have enough pre-cooked rice for another boondocking night dinner, so we went into Fred Meyer so Tom could buy some of the sushi he had seen the previous evening for dinner, only to find a completely different selection of sushi in the cooler today - none of which was to his liking.  We're guessing the regular sushi chef takes Sundays off, like the baker does?  We browsed the frozen dinner aisle again, but nothing tickled his fancy there either.  We did, however, snag the last loaf of a new bread we had bought this morning and tried for lunch - finding it quite good - and picked up some brioche buns on clearance as well, so it wasn't a completely wasted trip.

For dinner that night, Tom ended up making two servings of the powdered mashed potatoes we've been carrying around for years, but never used, and mixing it with kippered snacks and the small quantity of pre-cooked rice we had left - which ended up being quite tasty - to eat with some canned peas; Christine had pre-cooked Instant Pot Lasagna. 

Afterwards, we used our laptops for more planning and to write blog post #11.

Bedtime was at 12:45 a.m. (i.e. "just after sunset" 😄).  Tomorrow would be another Fairbanks exploration day.