Greetings from North Pole!

On Sunday after we visited the "resort" and ice hotel, we drove to North Pole, Alaska!  It's one of those towns that is typical of Alaskan towns - if you blink, you miss it!  But this one would be hard to miss.  Driving through North Pole in any season you will notice Christmas decorations, street names, and light poles that reflect their motto - "Where the Spirit of Christmas Lives Year Round."  We drove down Santa Claus Lane with giant candy cane light poles and stopped at the Santa Claus House, the official home of Santa Claus himself.  Many of the streets bear holiday names: Santa Claus Lane, Snowman Lane, Kris Kringle, Mistletoe, Holiday Rd., Saint Nicholas Drive, North Star Drive, Blitzen, and Donnor.  Street lights are decorated in candy cane motifs and many buildings are painted with Christmas colors and designs.  Live reindeer, a variety of photo opportunities, and Santa Claus himself are available for photographs.  The only thing missing was the cold weather!  We walked around in long sleeve tees.  It's amazing how warm it has been on our trip - we haven't needed our coats at all.  In fact, most of the time, in our hotel rooms, we have needed air conditioning and not all the hotels have it! 

Reindeer - none of them had a red nose though!!

Mural on outside of the building

I loved this mural on the building!

For over 60 years, they have been sending letters to children all over the world with the North Pole postmark and the assurance to the child that Santa is watching and will be making a visit soon.

We ended the day by returning to Fairbanks and wandering around Pioneer Park which is a themed park emphasizing historic Fairbanks.  It is a really nice 44 acre park that was built for the Alaska Centennial.  The park includes:  the steam train that Pres. Harding rode in when he drove the Golden Spike for the Alaskan railroad; a 40-foot antique carousel; cabins have also been refurbished as close as possible to their original condition and are occupied by local merchants offering an assortment of refreshments, gifts, and Alaskan souvenirs and a riverboat, S.S. Nenana, which once sailed Alaska's rivers, is permanently docked at the park and has a great diorama of the points of call in its heyday. It is  listed as a National Historic Landmark.  They also have a Salmon Bake that is very popular but we didn't have that since we had eaten a huge Chinese lunch about 3:00.