Alaska -- Day 48

We are spending the next few days in Fairbanks. It was a short drive from Delta Junction, but not an easy one. We put everything away and hitched up easily, but not far down the road it began to rain. In places it poured. That isn't a fun condition for driving, but we were already on the road and so we kept driving. No pictures of scenery today. Too many raindrops on the windshield. Thankfully, it quite before we set up here at Riverview RV in North Pole. Since we are grandparents, tomorrow we will check out Santa Claus House and watch the North Pole 4th of July parade.

We were astonished at the prices of fuel in Canada. But we are delighted today. At the Safeway gas station we only paid $4.05 a gallon for diesel. That is good news.

You may not have noticed, but Google Maps doesn't have any roads or towns and cities in Northern British Columbia, Yukon or Alaska. It sure makes it difficult to update our 2012 Travels map that is shown in the blog sidebar.

As we have traveled to Alaska, we have been impressed with the number of RVs heading south. We have talked to a number of people in RV parks who have already completed their travels in Alaska and are headed home. We are grateful we have the time to travel at a leisurely pace. We have six weeks to explore this state before heading down to Haines to board the ferry to the lower 48. On our last trip, we were in a real hurry to move about and see places we have never been. This time, we can savor the little things and smaller sites on our way to glacier tours and chartered fishing boats.

Once we were set up today, we headed to Walmart for a major shopping experience. It is a super Super Walmart and we found almost everything we were looking for. Since leaving Prince George, at least, and possible Montana, we have been buying only what we really needed (because of the prices and what was available). We had a lot of restocking to do. Then we headed to Safeway for the few things we still needed.

Safeway was a must on the agenda because that is where we could buy the Alaska Toursaver coupon book. I had read about the book and checked it out on line. It costs $100 and contains 165 buy one-get-one free coupons for tours, lodging, rentals and other items. We have already used it to book a trip on the Riverboat Discovery here in Fairbanks. If we use it for a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park and a fishing charter, we will have saved more than twice the cost of the book. Unless we leave Alaska tomorrow, it will be a good deal.