Visiting Santa's house in North Pole Alaska in July


Thursday July 5
I didn't sleep much last night, it rained all night and all morning so we slept in a bit. I got up and got groceries, ice and gas. It quit raining and Julie had just gotten up when i got back so we packed up the trailer, filled the gerry can with gas and left the gas station just before 11am.
  We drove about 20min to the famous crepe shop in north pole Alaska and had crepes for breakfast. I had cream cheese and strawberry, Julie had cheese-less Hawaiian, the kids had egg and cheese. Breakfast took an hour but was really, really good- i almost couldn't finish mine, Julie was full and the kids couldn't finish theirs even though we were all really hungry because it was getting close to noon before we got our food. It was a fun place too, the owners seemed to enjoy it and you got to watch them making your food.

We went to Santa's house after. Santa was there, just like he is every day of the year there. Its also basically a huge mall of Christmas decorations and gifts plus a Christmas countdown clock. We saw the reindeer but it was another 45min until the next tour to feed and pet them. So we watched them for a bit and took photos by the largest Santa statue in the world.









 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 That's as close as our kids got to santa in July
 

We stopped later on for some scenery photos and some guy talked to me about the car and what roads we were taking on our trip.

There was a spot beside the highway where the Alaska pipeline crossed the river and we stopped for some photos because it was pretty cool. 










Rikas roadhouse cost money to enter so we had lunch in the car and drove to the end of the Alaska highway where there was a roadhouse you could look through for free. It was a nice place and there were big mosquito statues.



 
 
 
 

Further on we stopped by an old church at Dot Lake and saw someone had left this in the front enterance and thought that was a little funny.

 

We stopped at the mukluckland amusement park but didn't go in. Its supposed to be a weird/creepy place which was still closed. Here is a short article about it. http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/11/08/mukluk_land_in_alaska_is_the_most_bizarre_theme_park_around.html



We got to tok for gas and arrived at the sourdough campground just after 7. Started setting up but there was a pancake toss contest for a free breakfast. I thought that would be a quick way to get a meal so we went to try. It ended up being a 2 hr ordeal since you had to stay until the very end if you won. Both Shawn and I managed to get the pancake in the bucket, Julie missed. We talked to an Australian couple that was out here for their honeymoon road-trip. They were interesting people and they were heading where we had already been and we were heading where they had already been so we shared places to see. It was 11.30 before we finished that and we still all had to shower and do laundry. The showers were unmetered and pretty nice so I did laundry while Julie showered the kids and we finally got to bed really late but we were all clean and all our stuff was clean so that was nice.

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