- Spent 10 days in an RV with husband and cats in Fairbanks.
- Cats don’t like traveling in cars. Especially for 6 hours one-way.
- The average temperature in Fairbanks while I was there was -20. It got to -30 and on the day I left hit a balmy -6.
- RVs aren’t made for that kind of cold so Greg winterized it. Meaning it had three layers of insillation on all windows and three space heaters (note: no natural light). Hay bails surrounded the bottom as to keep the space underneath still and near zero (so the floors of the RV were not too cold). Too cold for running water. No usable bathroom.
- Shared one bathroom with 10 other RVs, all of them occupied by men Greg works with. Had to run across the lot to get to it. I was the only girl in the neighborhood. Saw one of them in his underwear, which was NOT a pretty sight. He didn’t seem to mind.
- The bathroom was nasty and the water was so hard that the entire shower was Bright Orange. And it smelled like sulfer.
- I read 4 books and made a movie.
- I like Fairbanks way, way, way more than Anchorage. That was a huge surprise.
- The Northern Lights – Thanksgiving night they were so spectacular that we drove to a place without lights and watched them dance across the sky. They really do move like they’re alive and every time I watch a good show I am taken aback as to how wonderful they really are. I wish I could show you, but no picture does justice. It’s almost as though the molecules in my body respond to the molecules up there. I could watch them for hours if it wasn’t so damn cold. We lasted (maybe) five minutes.
- The insane cold temperatures make it beautiful. Generally I say that Fairbanks has its own kind of beauty in that it really is kind of ugly. But the cold maintains a frost on all trees and so there is no brown, only white. On everything. When it is light, the sky is a gentle blue that lulls. The sunrises and sunsets (conveniently only a few hours apart) are lovely in that colors that are generally so vibrant and alive are gentle and mysterious because of the barrier of cold. Fairbank's sunsets cannot be compared to any other sunsets I have seen. They are unique and foreign.
- I remembered -20 as colder than it was, which was a lovely surprise. I remembered being unable to breathe in without coughing and not being able to breathe through my nose at all. But that is more -40. 20 below means that you cannot take deep breaths without coughing, but normal breathing is unimpaired. And, udder cream is not necessary for nose breathing until 40 below.
Something I Noticed Myself Doing That I Forgot I Used To Do
- Clap because it is cold. Especially in the car. You can’t go anywhere fast because cars need about 20 minutes to warm up. This rule can be avoided if you turned it off within the hour. Thus, if you don’t have an auto-start (man’s greatest invention for cold weather that we do not own) you jump into a cold car after eating dinner and go several minutes before any heat begins. This is where I clap with my red mittens in order to try to keep warm. Yelping also occurs. As does cursing. And bouncing in the seat.
- “It’s a great place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there.” I don’t remember where I read this, a travel guide, I think, but I totally agree with it. It is a little ugly and there’s not much here, but the community is spectacular and it has a lot of heart.
- “Take the worst place you’ve ever been and take away the sunlight.” The back of the book The Worst Places To Live in America. I heard about this in line at the bookstore and the ladies were laughing about it. (That’s the difference between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Here they’d be pissed. There they think it is funny.)
- I head back with the cats in three weeks for winter break.
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