Chena Hot Springs sounded utterly peaceful and quiet when we woke in the campground, but we found it bustling with activity when I took Sara out for her walk. There was a line of about 30 people for the ice sculpture museum, a few people at the dump station, and I met about 10 others when I went down to the Reindeer pen. I wasn't expecting to see much there, but the reindeer were very impressive - huge velvet racks on their heads, babies in the pen, and lots of them. We also saw the activity center where all the ATV's are stored for ATV touring and bicycles for rent. The mosquitoes were not bad in the center of their property, but not sure I would have enjoyed touring outside for long. I then got back and pulled up stakes at the campsite, and we headed out at noon for Fairbanks. Again, the drive down 56 miles of Chena Hot Springs road was scenic, and you thought you would see moose at every body of water, but not us! We headed into Fairbanks to go to Tanana Valley Farmer's Market which is only Wednesday and Saturdays. It was a nice market, but still very limited vegetables - they are beautiful, like in a magazine, but we only saw kale,lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, radishes, and onions. We saw our fave arugula, but thought we'd look for better, found no other and when we went back, it was sold out! We paid $13 for 4 tomatoes!! They are big and beautiful, hope they taste like they've been grown on 21 hours of sunshine per day!! We also had a Thai Peanut/Cucumber Chicken Crepe for lunch - different, but not deserving of a repeat. We then drove over to the Visitor Center to park the RV, check out a few alternative options for tomorrow, and then walk the Chena River Walk from the Visitor Center to Pioneer Village. The walk passes through downtown, which still has a historic section that appears authentic, plus a lot of monuments and flowers. It then leads west out of town and is supposedly about 2 miles to Pioneer Village, with a dog park along the way. So we set out walking at 4:30pm, stopped at the Dog Park along the way - where we were approached by some young camera men who asked if we minded them filming our dog for an Animal Planet special (to air next Fall, something about a large animal veterinarian based in Fairbanks) - but they did make us sign a release, and we saw no ID, so if you see us on any illegitimate computer sites, you'll know how that came about! Sara was already half dead, and we were really hot since it is a full sun day today, probably 80 degrees so probably not her best acting debut! We made it to Pioneer Park by 6 and were greeted by a chocolate soft serve ice cream stand - yep, ordered up 2 of those delicacies!! That revived us to walk around the park - kind of touristy, but all the cabins are actual historic cabins that were moved to the site, and then set up to sell souvenirs, food, and even a theater - but they had a sign outside each cabin describing who lived in it, what their business was, and the story of the owner - usually from the 1800's. They even had the earliest "ladies of the night" and their stories of survival in gold mining town. Then we had the walk back to find the RV - we took another road just to see new sites, and it followed a commercial business district. We made it to the RV at 9pm (still sun glaring down on us) and drove over to our campground, Walmart. We shopped briefly there, but they were out of almost everything on our list, so then we went over to Fred Meyer. BTW, when I asked Elizabeth, the Fairbanks native I met at Chena Springs, where she would go to buy fresh Alaskan salmon, her quick response was "Fred Myer's, of course, and it might be on sale for $9/lb now!" - I'm just amazed that you don't buy it from a fish market or at the rivers, but apparently FM is the place to be!! It was 11pm when we finished shopping at Fred's - the sun is finally beginning to get lower in the sky, but still bright. The crowd of RV's at Walmart is unbelievable - I would guess close to 50 out here tonight, people milling around in the parking lot talking! We pulled in late, so we came over to the Tire Center area where it's not so crowded! Now to fix dinner!!