The Agnew Family aboard the "Dog House"

We were leaving the North Pole today and started the regular routine of putting everything away, closing the slide, hitching the truck, etc. Everything was going smoothly till we ran the slide in — the big bang as the slide closed just wasn’t right. After an anxious hour of fiddling Ed got the slide to go in and out without any “bangs” but it wasn’t positioned correctly. We drove out of the campground bumping along the gravel road and stopped at the dump station (you get rid of the gray and black water at a dump station). Ed looked at the slide and it was positioned correctly now .... he thinks a stone got stuck in the rail and jammed the slide and going down the bumpy road knocked it out. That stone caused a lot of worrying! About 1 hour north east of Fairbanks are the Chena Hot Springs.... how could we resist a visit. It was a nice paved road (no gravel!) that went through some nice scenery. A lot of people live out off of this road .... or at least there are a lot of mail boxes. We saw a couple of moose in ponds along the roadside. The hot springs resort provides dry RV camping in a wooded area — quite nice. While Colin was parking the trailer he misunderstood something Margaret said, and stomped off. Margaret waited a few minutes and then decided “the hell with him” she would finish parking the trailer. And she did a great job — Woman Power! Or was this a plot by Colin to get Margaret to learn how to park the trailer? The hot springs are offered in several flavors: a swimming pool at 80ish degrees F, 2 in door hot tubs, 1 large out door hot tub and a rock pool. The hot tubs and pool are chlorinated and children are allowed to use them. The rock pool is more natural and no one under 18 is allowed. They dug a rather large whole, placed very large rocks around it and put gravel on the bottom. Filtered (but not chlorinated) water from the hot spring (I think they said it is at 115F) is flowed into the pool and a water spray adds cold water. Very nice. We spent several hours floating in the rock pool. Zaph and Splash did manage to talk us into taking them for a walk. We found a nature trail that led to a beaver pond. The perfect place for Zaph and Splash to swim. Colin didn’t have a Splash’s ball with him so he threw a stick.... turns out Splash likes big sticks. Zaph wasn’t into sticks today and wanted the ball he had carried to be thrown. Worked out great.



The Chena Hot Springs


The pool that feeds the rock pool --- this one looks really hot!