Friends    ----

We are on the move again, but before we left Fairbanks there were a couple other thing we have not yet told you about.  Every summer there is Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival (FSAF).  Many kinds of arts are offered, from making goat cheese (we know the people who did that) to bagpipes to dance.  We took in a few of the offerings.  One was steel pan drums.  These started in the fifties when people turned metal barrels into musical drums.  A very early one is shown in the third picture below.  The teacher of steel pan drums is shown in that picture and is also in the middle of the first picture.  These have a very unique sound and the same drum can play many different notes by different areas of the surface.  Many well known artists come to teach their expertise.  A lady at church said that when her daughter was nine years old the Boston Pops was at FSAF.  There were a few of the Boston Pops musicians practicing and had this nine year old play along with them.  The FSAF is intended to be fun for all.  The experts enjoy the informal atmosphere in Fairbanks.  In these pictures, anyone who had taken the pan drum class had the opportunity to play in the evening concert

The Red Green Regatta came to Fairbanks.  Local boaters made floatable crafts using empty milk bottles, water bottles, etc. and lots of duct tape.  Unfortunately the water was too high on the river so the boats were judged while sitting in a parking lot.  Some did go down the river, but that was not part of the competition.

 



And, yes, we have now left Fairbanks.  This departing was different.  All other places of significance  we have driven away from we assume we will return again.  We will likely never be to Fairbanks again.  We will likely never see our Fairbanks friends again, except those we will see in heaven.  That encourages us.

And so, we left our apartment in Fairbanks for the last time and headed down the road to the lower 48.  Alaskans refer to travel outside their state as going outside.  So we are now outside.  But we are always  somewhere.  So even though we are now outside Alaska we are inside Yukon.  We stopped for the night at Destruction Bay.

The trip today (Tuesday, July 29) was cloudy most of the way and rainy much of the way.  I like mountains with clouds, but I also like mountains with sunshine.

 (The specks below are rain drops on the van window.)

So far so good.  Pray for our safety.  We plan to not take the Alaska Highway the whole way but in southern Yukon take the Cassiar Highway which will lead to Jasper and Bamff.

Thanks for your interest.

Larry and Elva