Let the Adventure Begin

I arrived in Fairbanks at 11 pm, as scheduled.

That’s where everything sort of fell apart. Springhill Suites was supposed to have a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel, but the courtesy telephones were carefully hidden. Actually the telephone for Springhill was so well hidden it was non-existent. No worries. I whipped out my cell phone, which I’d used all day on wi-fi at SEA-TAC, only to find it had decided not to function. The message said it had updated, but it didn’t want to reboot or even turn off.

Fine.

There was a pay phone in the corner, so I started scrounging for change, which I’d carefully cleaned out of my purse before departure. Once I found someone with quarters for a dollar, after asking four different people, I was able to contact the hotel.

I was beyond exhausted at this point but the driver showed up within a half hour or so. She pointed to a faint green streak in the sky. “The lights are out.”

In my state it took a few seconds to register. The northern lights. The aurora. They weren’t bright, and they were only green, but there they were.

“I can pull behind the Carlson Center if you like, so you can see them better.”

“Of course.” Even though I desperately wanted a stationary place to lay my head, I couldn’t resist. It might be (and was) my only opportunity.Faint though they were, they danced overhead with a lovely green glow.

When the van pulled up to Springhill, I stumbled out, registered and made my way to the fifth floor, my home for the next six days. Tired as I was, I pulled out and hung up clothes and decided to try plugging my phone into an AC outlet to see if that would make it work. Success!! Thank heavens.

***

Many Denizens of the Bears Den Fan Club of Wild & Free Mushing had converged on Fairbanks from various points. I knew some would be staying at Springhill, and we planned to meet for breakfast the next morning. Silly me. I assumed anyone wearing a Wild & Free shirt would be one of us, so I approached the first two ladies I saw. “Are you members of the Bears Den?”

Amanda and Darlene

They looked at me like I was crazy, so I explained a bit.

Mike & Pat

“We met a couple last night who had Wild & Free attire. She said her name was Pat.” At just about that moment, Pat and her husband Mike rounded the corner into the breakfast room. She was who I was waiting for. Pat had been my FB friend for long before the Bears Den started. We'd had a number of online conversations over the years.

We all bonded as if we’d known each other forever. Amanda and her grandmother Darlene had traveled from Ohio. Pat and Mike hail from Washington State, by way of Philadelphia. I was the Californian of the bunch.

That was the beginning of the Alaskan Adventure and the forging of a bond between the five of us over the next week. It also was the beginning of the many friendships that would develop as we Bears Den Denizens met each other in person after being FB friends for nearly a year.