Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Aurora Ice Museum

From Aurora Ice Museum
Out at Chena Hot Springs, this building houses the Aurora Ice Museum. Kept at a constant 20 degrees f, it is accessable all year long.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
Located about 60 miles from Fairbanks on a good paved road, the resort has many activities to offer. We wanted to see the ice musuem, and it is the only one reportedly open year around.

Since we were having another day of the liquid variety of sunshine, we took our old point and shoot camera. We also realized that at 20 degrees, there would be condensation on the lens, and didn't want to take any chances with the SLR.

Most of the following pictures are taken without flash, as the flash bounces around the ice making for really poor quality pictures. Of course without flash, the camera had a hard time focusing. We did our best.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
The front houses ice storage, workshop with tools, sculptures in progress, and the last shot above shows the building from rear to front.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
The above 3 shots are of the bar area, where at the end, you can buy an Appletini, which has massive amounts of liquor to keep the drink in a liquid state. The glasses are made of ice!

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
Above are two of the sculptures and the wedding chappel. There are also two bedrooms you can rent and sleep on ice covered with carabou hide. Sounds terrible to us! The picture I took was totally out of focus, so couldn't be used.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
Our rain jackets are no match the these temperatures, and they do provide these heavy parkas, and I do mean heavy. I don't envy Alaskan's who need to wear this type of gear for 7 months of the year. Several locals in Fairbanks told me they consider winter days of -20 warm! The Pacific Northwest sounds wonderful.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
Some of the things we saw on our drive back. We did see a moose, but by the time my now frozen fingers fumbled with the camera, she was long gone.

From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
From Aurora Ice Museum
This shows Popeye in our campgound in Fairbanks and what they call Cottonwood trees. We have never experienced anything quite like this. The sky is full of this stuff blowing around. It looks like it's snowing outside. Bob and I both have been sneezing and sneezing. We don't know if we have bad colds or bad reactions to this stuff.

For further information: Chena Hot Springs

1 comment:

Jim and Sandie said...

I hate cottonwood trees and our son's neighbor has two of them. What a mess they make. And you are probably reacting to the cottonwood. But that ice museum is really a place I would love to see. That was really neat even if it was really really cold.