Prins family adventures

American Independence day in Fairbanks We slept in because I was really sore and tired from all the gold panning. For breakfast we plugged our toaster into the inverter in the car and had toasted bagels. We love to have our toaster along! First we drove to the Fairbanks Information Center, which it turned out, also has a good sized museum in it. We enjoyed reading about different winners of the Iditarod, learning a bit about oil pipelines in Alaska, and also some native stuff, most of which we'd seen in different places. In the part about native elders, there was a Bible verse one of the elders had put up there, that was really neat. We went to the Large Animal Research Station for their noon tour, but we were a little disappointed, because the tour was super short, and we couldn't even go up to the fence to see the animals. It is the only musk ox research center  in the world, but I'd give it a miss, unless you are really into musk ox and have binoculars....

The fountainhead auto museum had over 80 American made antique cars. The really neat thing is that all the cars there are  historically significant, pre-World War II automobiles. All except 2 of its cars still run if i remember right and all except maybe 10 are restored to amazing shape. The collection includes a car with an 8 cycle motor, “alternative” vehicles from way back like early steam, electric and hybrid cars, the first American Midget racers and the first V16-powered engine, air cooled motors with incredible heat sinks, a car that ran an extra cylinder off the exhaust of the first 2, a car with a friction drive transmission, a steam car that could do 130mph in 1906, car that had the first accelerator pedal as well as being the first front engine rear drive connected with a driveshaft car, a 1914 car whos engine set an endurance record by running at wide open throttle for 337hrs with no adjustments, a1917 pierce arrow inline 6cyl engine that had 13.5L di...