Today was a quite day to relax, with no tours planned.

I got up at 10.30am and ambled across for a late breakfast. This along with a relatively early dinner means I can save on buying lunch. So today I had a short stack of pancakes (2 buttermilk pancakes, fluffy and perfectly cooked – I wish mine were as good), topped with maple / honey and matched to a couple of cups of sugar-free iced tea. yummy.

Today was pretty warm relatively speaking, with the temperature up at minus 16 degrees Celsius, virtually tshirt weather. So I went with Marian and Rodney for a walk to the cemetery. It was about 400 metres away. We couldn’t find any actual graves but there was a couple of information boards. Sadly they tell of a couple of time between 1899 and 1903 of people have left for Coldfoot and not arrived, plus one of a man who froze to death at 73 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 58 Celsius) in 1903 when trying to drag loads of moose meat.

After we got back to the Inn, I sat down and watched TV. There were a few episodes of “Alaska Mega Machines” which demonstrated a number of very large pieces of equipment used to ship products to Juneau, clear the Dalton highway and prepare it for trucks after snow storms, dig a trench in the snow / ice to ensure the melting ice in spring does not cover the highway, and another large piece of equipment to dig up the ice. As well as a tug boat used up north that has its own ice-breaker fitted to break ice up to 3 feet thick. The Alaskans have thought of everything, and most of the equipment on these shows was specifically developed for Alaska.

There was also a show about an indoor shipbuilding facility in a place called Ketchikan, which has 13 feet of rainfall per year (hence the need to be inside). And some of the hull is built upside down so the welders, technicians etc. can get to it easier, then uses a double gantry which is one of the strongest in the USA, to flip over the hull to allow it to be welded to the rest of the frame.

Interestingly, Juneau is the capital city of Alaska, but is south of the main body of Alaska ands has no roads in or out – so you have to fly in or take a cargo / passenger / vehicle ship to get there. There are many light aircraft around Alaska to traverse the large areas where there is no roads.

An interesting thing I noticed as well was to do with commercials that sell medications. For every 30 second commercial, the first half of the commercial is selling the product, then the next, approx.,  10-12 seconds lists the various reasons you should not take the product as well as its possible side effects, followed up with the last 3-5 seconds being about speaking with your doctor before taking it. They do still have some small print at the bottom of the screen like in Australia, but it was fascinating listening to the possible side effects and warnings about taking the medications. It is nothing like we do in Australia.

At 5.30pm I headed back over to the Café for dinner. I had a very tasty Chicken Soup, followed up by an Oreo cheesecake with a scoop of chocolate icecream for dessert. I followed up by watching with Mark a game of basketball between the Houston Rockets and the Golden State Warriors (the team Andrew Bogut used to play for), with Houston winning 132 v 127 in double overtime. It’s as I remember when going to see the Perth Wildcats with my brother Chris some years ago, lots of stoppages and advert breaks. In between the adverts, the game was pretty good though, especially as it was pretty tight the whole time.

At 9pm it was still cloudy, there were no stars obviously, so I decided not to stay up to see if the clouds went away thus revealing the Aurora Borealis. There was however some very nice snowflakes that started to fall. I took a couple of photos from the front of the Inn over to the Café with some of the snowflakes, with different aperture and time settings. I hope to improve on this in Canada to get some good shots, when the temperature is warmer and I can actually get my hand out of my mittens to touch the camera!

Then I headed off to bed. It turns out that the clouds lifted and the Aurora Borealis did come out, as Rodney and Connie went to the cabin in Wiseman to watch and get photos. I was glad to hear in the morning that they had gotten some good photos of the AB. Everyone should aspire to get up to see the northern lights, or in fact travel down to the bottom of Tasmania or New Zealand to see the Southern Lights, AKA Aurora Australis, as I will hopefully get to do in a couple of years time!