Fairbanks

Wednesday, July 6: Fairbanks, AK

Here I sit in the Fairbanks airport, ready to fly back to Seattle and the lower forty-eight. After Seattle, Tacoma - AND THEN THE WORLD! Well, not really. Probably not really.

Alaska is one of those states that have a distinct personality. I would say it’s extreme and independent yet friendly. I wish that I could have gotten a deeper look at the place, but we had to stick to a rather tourist-y itinerary. It’s sad that it seems like the cruise ship companies are buying a handful of the towns and cities around here. The cruise companies are like a little tourist trap factory. Apart from that, though, it really is a unique and beautiful place. Mountains and good seafood, really everything one could possibly want. The thing is that the weather and the strange daylight hours aren’t for everyone. People here actually know what sort of engine they need to switch to and from once the temperature drops below negative forty. To me, negative forty is the answer to an arithmetic problem, not a meteorological reality. There is something attractive about the challenge, though...

Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do when I get back, and I keep giving evasive answers. Believe me; I’m thinking about it all the time! I’d tell you all if I knew. I’m not sure if the problem is that too many places are good or that no place is good. Maybe it’s just on the brink of being too big a thing to think about. There are so many factors to consider. In the end, I’m not sure that it even matters, because I know that I will be content wherever. I just want to pick the place where it will be easiest to be happy. Anyway, the next planned stop is Bend, OR, pretty much the only town on the short list that I have not yet seen. Maybe it will be right, maybe it won’t, but either way I think that seeing it will help me move toward deciding.