Ambling around Fairbanks, then back to Anchorage via Denali (and a moose!)

There is a park in downtown Fairbanks called Pioneer Park, formerly known as AlaskaLand. I think they gave up the better name.

It has about 20 little dioramas of old frontier Alaska towns. They are fantastic!

The last one was completed in 2011, as the creator has gone to his great reward. One can only hope that some young Fairbanksian will pick up his X-Acto knife and continue the tradition.

The rest of the park was almost as fantastic.

They moved a bunch of buildings from other parts of Fairbanks. Most of these buildings were no doubt slated for demolition.

You see that little sign on the brown building there?

This is what it says:

A large number of the cabins that were saved had been brothels. Not sure if that is because the city wanted to knock down all the old brothels, there were a lot of old brothels, or in people's minds all old buildings were brothels.

Even this old Alaskan Mining Museum had a plaque on it that said it used to be a brothel.

They also had one of the old paddle wheeler boats that plied the Yukon from the Arctic Ocean all the way to Fairbanks. That, too was fantastic. They were wood fueled, and only stopped in the 1950s. An old open fire high pressure steam engine. (100% Torque at 0 RPM!!!) that was running into the 50s!

On our way back to Anchorage, we stopped again at Denali National Park.

We saw a moose!

and another moose.

and then we saw snow on the mountain. It was the first snow of the year, on August 10th. Looks like a long winter

I love this igloo. It was built as a hotel, but never occupied.

Outside of the National Park, we came across a cute little creek named for Doreen:

 It  was very pretty.

and she is very troublesome.

Next stop, Seattle!