Today we arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska. Weather was sunny and almost 80. We spent the afternoon scouting the city to see what we want to do while we're here. We visited the University of Alaska Art Museum, a beautiful building with some incredible and unusual art. We stopped at a place called Creamer's Field Waterfowl Refuge. There was a flock of  sandhill cranes wading in a small pond that we stopped to photograph. The pond also contained redhead and bufflehead ducks, canada geese, gulls and small shorebirds. While we were watching the cranes a bald eagle zoomed overhead, circled the pond once, scared the bejesuts out of all the birds on the pond, banked hard, stuck his talons out and dove into the pond catching a redhead duck. We watched the eagle pluck the duck (feathers flying everywhere) and ate it.

So far we've seen black tail deer, black bear, grizzly bear, moose, caribou, lots of beaver, fat yellow bellied marmot and hoary marmot, cute little red squirrel, colombian ground squirrel, big horn sheep, stupid stone sheep, buffalo, red fox, porcupine, wolf and  rabbit. This is the Wild Kingdom in action! Still need a musk ox and elk.

We're trying to get a reservation for a private 4 wheel drive jeep trip into Denali back country $150 each.) Sounds better than paying $120 a piece to a ride a tour bus packed with 50 other people.