Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
My friend Rhonda Sleighter and I, both from Anchorage nowadays, I don't take it per-
sonally.
Who comes to Chena Hot Springs? Everyone, from everywhere. It's been an Alaskan
joke for years that Japanese newlyweds come to Fairbanks every winter by the thousands,
as it is considered good luck to conceive a child beneath the northern lights. “September's
turning into a Japanese month, too, though,” Joe says, “they like the hiking and the rafting
and the eagles.”
During our stay, forty Americans from Outside come on an Astronomy magazine tour,
including two women, one from Boston and one from Texas, whom we meet at the bar
(Bloody Marys from a homemade mix, “pretty good but spicy,” Rhonda says, “and it has
beans”). Neither woman is an astronomer but they both want an up close and personal
look at the aurora.
“We're trying to get people to embrace nature,” Joe says, “on vehicles from their feet to
the Snow Cat.” What is there to do? What isn't is the shorter answer. You can go to dog
mushing school with Iditarod musher Kezio Funatsu. You can go for a dog sled or horse-
drawn sleigh ride with John Hoegberg. You can go for a snow mobile ride, ice fishing,
flight seeing, ice skating, snow shoeing, an ATV four-wheeler or a Snow Cat tour, a horse
or pony ride.
Joe sets us up with a cross-country ski lesson, which I need as I haven't been on my
skis for three years. Gail Lordi, the Springs' cross country ski guide outfits me, Rhonda
and Eileen from Scotland by way of North Carolina with boots, skis and poles from the
activities center equipment storeroom, and we're off like a herd of turtles, or maybe it was
crab, as my skis seem intent on sliding out from under me. Rhonda gets into a fistfight
with a black spruce tree, which scores three knockdowns, at which she lays back in the
snow and addresses the sky in ringing tones. I nearly fall down again I'm laughing so
hard, and Eileen's trick knee choses this moment to go out, several times, but we're all
glowing by the time we get back to the resort. “Having fun?” Joe says as he zips by. Joe is
frequently seen and always in motion. The first time we met he poured us coffee at break-
fast.
The wind has picked up and we stumble back into the bar. “Hot drinks,” I manage to
say through chattering teeth to the server, “got any hot drinks?” (Hot Buttered Rum for
