August 17, 2026

Wednesday 17 August - day 50

We left fairly early at 7.45 and after 2 hours 44 minutes we arrived in Tanana having paddled 22,7 km. It was a beautiful morning with lots of mist and no wind at all.

We arrived around 10.30 and Chris went to see a person about B&B he had contact to on the net. It turned out it would be $300 for one night in a small room with no windows. We said yes but were not happy.

We got into the room and went straight on net to check flights to Fairbanks the next day. Realising there would be a flight late afternoon we decided to book that so we didn’t have to pay for the room. [The guy from the store] was really nice about this and let us stay for the rest of the day in the room to relax.

While I was in the room Chris went to the Tribal office and gave them our canoe and a lot of gear. We sorted the rest of our gear and gave away all the left over food as well. Having gotten rid of a lot of stuff we were now ready to go. Left a message for Suzi and Lars at the washeteria, relaxed for a bit more and then [the man from the store] took us out to our plane. It was a very small plane with only room for 6-7 passengers.

We arrived in Fairbanks around 19:00 but nowhere near Fairbanks international as we had expected. We had to get a taxi from where we were to Fairbanks International. After going all over the airport to try and register our arrival with the Border Agency, we found out that they were closed and we had to come back next day.

We were then trying to get hold of our hotel to find out if they had an airport shuttle but Chris just couldn’t get the payphone to work. After a long time and a lot of going to and fro Chris got us a shuttle to the hotel with the help of some tour group. The fun thing was Chris had talked to a tour bus driver earlier and he couldn’t help as he would be fired if he did but after going through the tour group we ended up with him as a driver!

Got to our hotel Bear Lodge and we had book 2 nights in a deluxe room with two queen beds as it was the same price as a double room. It was a very nice room. We went for pizza across the road even before we had a shower as it was getting late - not bad for us as we could’t smell ourselves but maybe not good for other people!

While eating we decided we would like 3 nights in the hotel so that we would have 2 full days to get ourselves organized.

We booked that and 3 nights would be $372 in a deluxe room as compared to $300 for the no window, 3 bed small room in Tanana. A very good swap, glad we came to Fairbanks today.

Had a very nice shower before going to bed.