Fairbanks

Training, Tests, Tours and Trips. Things are finally really picking up. After a few training sessions, Travis and I became familiar with the motor coaches in Fairbanks. All the other guys have come up from Utah as well and we have moved into our apartment.

The first step for Travis and I was to get road tested by our division so that they knew for sure that we could drive a bus and hadn't just gotten our licenses on a fluke. After passing our road tests they gave us keys to the coaches. One key opens all the Princess coaches and another for all the Holland America coaches.

On Monday we took a familiarization trip to the Chena Hot Springs, a tourist destination for many, that we will be taking our guests to in the evenings. The Chena Hot Springs gets its power from a small geothermal power generator and uses its power for their restaurant, hotel facilities, ice museum, and green house. The also have an out-doors hot spring that is supplied by water from the hot spring.

In their green house they grow all the vegetables and herbs they need for their restaurant. During the winter they use a variety of special colored lights to help the plants grow since the sun could on shine for a couple hours of the day. They built the green house because vegetables are so expensive to import from the lower 48. However, even with vegetable cost cutting measures, they still charge an insane amount for a salad in the restaurant, so I decided I wasn't really that hungry since they didn't volunteer to feed us while we were there.

The Ice museum they have is year round. They keep it at 20 degrees but the ice still manages to shrink due to sublimation (the conversion of solid straight to gas). In the ice museum, a husband and wife, world class ice sculpting team, works full time constantly refurbishing their sculptures and making new exhibits. When they aren't working on the museum they are making martini glasses of ice for guests to use to sip their alcohol. In the museum they have a life size sculpture of two knights on horseback jousting, a samurai, venus, an igloo, and a xylophone. The xylophone is located in side of he igloo which provides for some very interesting acoustics when played. The xylophone is made completely of ice and is tuned perfectly to key. Also in the museum, are a couple of themed rooms where guest can spend the night in exchange for the deed to their house. The museum also has a bar and bar stools that are topped with caribou hide (the most insulating fur, with more hairs per square inch than any other animal). After a long hard day in -40 degree weather someone could come into the ice museum to warm up and kick back with a couple of hard ones, anything virgin would just freeze to your glass.

The Chena Hot Springs gets the majority of their guests durning the summer and dead of winter. Only the Japanese tourists come for the winter. The hot springs during the winter produce so much steam that you can only see a couple of feet in front of you, a perfect set up for playing hide-and-go-seek. Girls like to play with their wet hair in the hot springs too, when they lift it out of the water it freezes quickly in the 40 below air and becomes hard instantly. The Japanese tourists love to come during the winter because they believe it good luck to conceive under the northern lights, you don't want to run into a pair of them while playing hide-and-go-seek.

We have also become familiarized with the city tours. We take people downtown and tell the story of Fairbanks and point out and explain historical sites. Around town we take people to the trans-Alaska pipe line, the riverboat discovery, the El Dorado gold mine and the no. 8 gold dredge. We pick up and drop off people at the airport, train station and a variety of hotels around town.

I have to go now but I will try to continue this in the evening.
Stay tuned.