My Folks Visiting Alaska

My folks came up to visit me in March. We got to see the North American Sled Dog Races, which are sprint races that start in downtown Fairbanks. They race for three days. First day they go 20 miles, second day 20 miles, and the third day they go 27 miles. The times for all three days are added together to determine the winner.



We also got to go to the International Ice Art Festival in Fairbanks. They have some amazing artwork there, though, it is really difficult to capture it with a photo. Here's my folks with a sculpture that is for the Chinese New Year!
We took a little hike out onto a ridge outside of town. We wanted to do a practice hike before we head out to Tolovana Hot Springs next week. My folks did fine on the practice hike, so we should do fine to get out to Tolovana (cross my fingers).
Then we went to Tolovana Hot Springs. My parents loved the hiking. They hadn't been on an overnight hiking trip for many years. This is something we used to do a lot when I was a kid. But, since my bro and I left home, my folks haven't been out on long hiking trips much. So, they really loved the hike. They also thought the hot springs were great. We stayed two nights, and afterwards, they said they would have liked to have stayed another night out there. The temperature was between negative 10 and positive 10 during the whole trip. It was a little windy ontop of the summit area, but otherwise was pretty comfortable.

Here's the three of us outside our cabin.

My mom wanted to be sure there wasn't anyone in the outhouse b4 going in.

Here's my folks outside the cabin.

Here's my folks going over the summit.

We got back into Fairbanks at around 5:15 PM, just in time to go to Silver Gulch Brewery for beer tasting. Good timing.