Alaska is burning

Ill get to the title in a minute.

Up this morning and didn't have to pack! We are at the same hotel tonight.

On the bus around quarter of nine then off to our the El Dorado gold mine. Our tour director surprised us a bit with a visit to a viewing spot of the Alaskan Pipeline. Super interesting.

Gold mining was great. I far exceeded expectations. We went on a brief train ride and learned some history about how mining was originally done and how it developed. There was a guy playing guitar and fiddle that used to play with Johnny Cash and Don Ho. He was very good.

Jane got more gold than I did...$27 worth. I only got $18. But both of those were better than most in our group.

Had lunch at an Italian place in Fairbanks. I had a great ten layer lasagna and Jane had a chicken wrap that was very good as well.

We then went on the riverboat Discovery III. Kind of corny, but some interesting stuff. It lasted three and a half hours with about an hour at this interpretive site with natives explaining some of their way of life.

Then back to the hotel to drop off stuff before flying to the Arctic circle for that six hour adventure.

We went to get on the bus and got late word that it was cancelled!!! Much of Alaska is really on fire and the smoke is very thick here. It is hard to breathe and there were safety concerns about taking off or more acutely....landing. As I write this, I can barely make out the trees across the street from the hotel.

We are both kind of bummed, but understand. We are just relaxing and packing in the hotel. Had dinner here and are now watching "Don't tell mom the babysitter is dead"

We have to have our luggage our at 3am and be on our bus to the airport at 4am. We fly to Seattle, have a brief layover, then fly to LAX. We are meeting with Mike and Kristen and Jack Leighs for our overnight "layover" before catching a direct flight to Boston on Friday.

That is all assuming that our flight can get out with the smoke in the morning...think good thoughts!