Day 13 - Fairbanks to Anchorage to Juneau

Check out this camper setup in the Walmart parking lot!

Fairbanks weather:  High 54, Low 39 with rain ALL day

Juneau weather:  High 59, Low 52 with overcast skies, but not so much that our plane couldn't come in.  Yay!

Steps walked:  Shaun - 6,172 steps and 6 flights climbed; Shannon - 7,339 steps and 7 flights climbed

Critter count:  Not a dang one even though we went to the Large Animal Research Center at the university.  I guess the musk ox didn't like the rain!

Today was another transition day.  We slept in, ate a bagged breakfast and left the B&B at 11:00.  We went to Walmart to buy enough cushiony stuff to finish packing our shipping boxes, then we went to the post office and mailed our second set of boxes home.  Again, we were astounded at how little it cost.  Next we went to Hot Licks, which is another Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives place.  We had the homemade Alaska blueberry ice cream (which was seriously nummy) along with a conversation on the economics of raising chickens in Alaska (I know...WTF?).

At the recommendation of the guy at Hot Licks, we went to the Large Animal Research Center at the University of Alaska, but we didn't feel like walking around in the rain, and we couldn't see any animals anyway.  Instead, we headed off to Pioneer Park, which was kind of a cheesy series of historical buildings including the train car that President Harding rode when he came to Alaska to drive in the golden spike on the Alaska Railroad.  We did find some cool neck warmers that were made from old cashmere sweaters, which served us seriously well all day since it was raining and cold.  There was an art display that had some beautiful quilts and artists' books and other stuff that was pretty cool.  All in all, it was a worthwhile visit...especially since it was free!

Unfortunately, we had to go back to Walmart to buy a noise generator for Shanny girl.  There was one of these at Minnie Street, and Shannon says that it helps her ignore my snoring even better than a fan.  Since we had to forego our fans due to space concerns, we figured we'd buy one of these sound generators to use on the ship (and to have for future trips).  So, back to Walmart (for the third time this trip) we went!

At 2:30 we headed to the airport and said goodbye to Fairbanks.  The flight to Anchorage was only an hour and then we had an hour and a half for dinner and then an hour and half flight to Juneau.  We had no problems at all despite the fact that Juneau is notorious for screwing up people's plans due to being socked in by fog.  We arrived in Juneau at 8:30, ordered pizza in the hotel room, and prepared for the next phase of our journey.  Our plan for tomorrow is to visit the Glacier Gardens which is a garden where the trees are planted upside down.  Weird huh?  We have to meet the people from Lindblad/National Geographic at 2:00 at the airport and then the cruise begins with some touring of Juneau even before we get on the ship.  We're excited!!!!

Since this was the most boring post in the history of blog posts, we just had to include this picture of the remote control condom in our hotel room.  How funny is that?