Old and New Traditions - Alaska Day 8

Friday was another fairly low-key day. Julie and I slept in again, and then ran over to campus on the trails, and the more important stop on the run after that was Hot Licks, Fairbanks’ local ice cream shop. Tasty ice cream cone to start, finished with a good falafel down the road from The Pita Place. That’s not backwards, is it? Running, followed by ice cream, was a freshman year tradition for Julie and me.

70 degrees in Fairbanks? Oh yes.

Friday was to be the day we went flying with Julie’s colleague Martin, but he was called to fly in supplies to the villages flooded by the Yukon. Certainly a much worthier cause than my flightseeing. Instead, Julie tried to scrounge up some people for a world-famous booze cruise. Summer means a lot of people out of town, but we did manage to get her friend Ashlee to join us in the borrowed canoe. The Chena (CHEE-na) river runs through Fairbanks and there are several restaurants along its banks. We stopped first at the Boatel where we met up with Julie’s roommate Donald and two of his friends, and then floated down to Pike’s Landing, where I got what amounted to the Alaska seafood smorgasboard: halibut, salmon, rockfish, and shrimp. Also tasty. Again, another gorgeous day, mosquitos at bay (for the most part).

Me looking like a dork, and Ashlee peacin' out