We keep chilling...and packing (sob!)

Saturday - September 6, 2014

Saturday dawned clear and bright...or so I presume since I was asleep.  But once our alarm went off at 8:30, I bounced up because dude, priorities.  I gotta get breakfast.  Today it was scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage/bacon, and pancakes with butter and hot maple syrup. Mmm...good stuff.  Lori told us that if the skies clear, we should be in for a good show since the solar storm that occurred a few days before should’ve reached us by now - so we had our fingers crossed for a clear night.  Also, it was our last night (sob) and my mama was hoping for a big show even though we’ve already seen lots of awesomeness.

walking to the Lodge in the cold.  We don't get up for a lot, but we damn well get up for breakfast!

less guests today, so there was a little less food

this was kind of like McDonald's apple pie...but like, ten thousand times more delicious.

The day was spent resting up because we had a long trip back to Anchorage the next day.  Really, today we were lazier slugs than the day before.  But my brother, who’s got totally itchy feet and can’t stay still for an entire day wanted to drive into town again.  So we decided to just go and get some pho since he doesn’t get good pho in China.  On the way down, I insisted we stop off at the display for the Alyeska pipeline since it’s not something you get to see every day. Also, even though I know crap about engineering, even I know this is a big deal, and I didn’t want to leave without seeing it.  So we stopped for about 10 minutes on our way down to Fairbanks for me to walk around and snap some pictures of it.

say "cheese" at the pipeline!

I know nothing about engineering.  I can't even do math.  But I did like how this pipe went into the ground and wanted a photo of that.  Yes, I am retarded.

I had turned to my Trusty Restaurant Guru - Yelp - to find food in Fairbanks.  Seeing as we liked Irashai a few days before, I found Little Saigon in Fairbank as one of the few good pho places with good reviews.  They did warn that the place wasn’t a lot to look at - but did indicate that the pho was authentic and the food was good.  I figure it’s hard to mess up fried rice at the very least so I wasn’t worried.

look at us so ignorant of the lack of deliciousness that awaits inside.  

I should have been worried.  Because the food was...no bueno is the nicest way I could put it.  Yelp had failed me! We walked into a small dusty house with a bright dragon painted on one of the walls.  We were shown to a table in the corner and sat there for awhile.  The service wasn’t bad, but the food...it was pretty bad.  I ordered what I always do - the bun, which is vermicelli.  I got the charboiled pork vermicelli, my mom got chicken fried rice (I didn’t get a picture, I wish a did - because it would say a gazillion words) and my brother and and dad got the pho tai (beef noodle broth with rare steak).  My brother and dad got their food first and both said the soup wasn’t hot enough - and it needs to be boiling hot because it’s suppose to cook the rare steak.  My brother said it didn’t taste like pho at all, my dad said it was too sweet.  But they ate all the noodles, though neither of them drank any of the soup.  My mom’s chicken friend rice looked...odd.  The chicken looked brown and dried like they were leftovers and though I didn’t try it. My mom didn’t eat very much and told my dad to eat some because she didn’t want the owner/cook/waitress (she did it all - she was by herself) to feel bad.  My dad choked some down and said it was pretty bad.  And lemme tell you, my dad is not a picky eater. He'll eat just about anything. My bun was not delicious.  Usually it comes with shredded lettuce with julienned vegetables.  I ended up with a bowl of cold noodles and basically, bagged iceberg lettuce salad under the vermicelli with random pieces of pork - which wasn’t very good either.  The eggrolls we ordered were soggy, greasy and kind of limp.  It didn’t come with lettuce like we’re used to and we didn’t finish it either.  I felt so bad because the lady was so nice, but the food was so bad.  She brought us a plate of sliced apples, fortune cookies, chocolate creme sandwich cookies and candy.  My mom felt grossed out at this point and we threw down some cash and literally ran out when she went back into the kitchen.  Raymond and I jumped into the minivan and started rolling with the rear doors still sliding shut because we felt so bad.  We ended up just laughing about it in the car.  Because really, what can you do but laugh when you’re afraid you’re all going to end up with explosive diarrhea or come down with food poisoning two days before your long planned Alaskan cruise???

soggy, greasy not so tasty eggrolls :(
I'm still confused as to how something deep fried could be so far from delicious

the pho.  That didn't taste like pho.

My bun.  That also didn't taste like bun.

Alas, despite our fears, we did not come down with explosive diarrhea.  Well, I didn’t.  My mom claims she got the runs from the place, but the rest of us, though we thought the food was no bueno didn’t get sick from it, so hey, God is good, right?

In anticipation of a phenomenal show that night, we went back to the cabin and packed all our crap up.  We had stuff scattered everywhere, though we’d all been living out of our suitcaes the last few days since there were no closets or storage for clothing in the little cabin.  Unfortunately, even though we stayed up most of the night and trooped outside out of bed at 4 am because the thick blanket of clouds finally cleared out - we didn’t see any nights.  Sigh.  Even though we were a little sad, there really isn’t anything to complain about - we saw the lights for two nights, and we got really good shows - we saw them dancing, not just glowing!  I had read so many reports of people who spend a week or two in Fairbanks and don’t see anything during that time, so the fact that I saw something at all in the four days we spent there...my heart is happy :)