An even hotter day in Fairbanks

Sunday 14th July
When we went to bed in affable, friendly Anchorage last night we didn't realise that on a summer Saturday night at midnight it turns into the wild west! The youth of the town were partying in the streets until the wee small hours and the marvellous (or so we had thought!) downtown location of our hotel meant that they mostly seemed to be congregating under our window! As well as laughing and shouting they were driving up and down the streets peeping their horns and someone was driving a motorcycle around with no exhaust on it, the sound was so loud that it seemed almost to be in the bedroom with us! Luckily we are all good sleepers and we didn't lose too much sleep; summers are short in Alaska so the young people have to party when they can!
After a lovely breakfast of freshly made waffles we picked up our hire car and set off for a very long drive north (7 hours). We have two long days of driving during this holiday and the reason is because I couldn't decide which to miss out - Denali, Fairbanks or Seward (because of time and distances) and in the end I decided that I couldn't miss out any of them! However it was a good driving day with sunny weather and no hold ups at all, and the views of mountains were splendid, including the majestic Denali (formerly known as Mount McKinlay) towering above the rest.
We are now in Fairbanks, which is the furthest north that we have ever been at 64.50 degrees north (on land anyway; our plane flew in a wide northern circle above Greenland when we went to Calgary in 2008). However I can't believe how hot it is; 89 degrees today! We went to the visitors' information centre and apparently Fairbanks is often the hottest place in Alaska, there must be some geographical reason for it. Our guest house is a few miles out of town down a country road, and when we arrived (thanks to James for bringing our sat nav!) there was no one there and when we phoned her the lady who owns it was out of town and had forgotten we were coming. However she was very pleasant and directed us by phone to our room. We went back into town for a yummy meal at an Italian restaurant which we ate sitting outside in the sunshine. Downtown Fairbanks is very small - it doesn't seem to have the vibrancy of Anchorage (although after our experience last night maybe that's a good thing! And now we are sitting on the balcony outside our bedroom back at the guest house, hoping that some grizzly bears will come out of the trees, but no sightings yet. It is now 11 p.m. Alaska time and the sky is still bright blue - I don't think it's going to get properly dark at all tonight because we're so far north.
In other family news, Jamie has emailed me today from Lima in Peru, and Alasdair and Cat emailed yesterday from Flores in Indonesia! We have never been so scattered across the globe! And let's not forget Jack, who is on his holidays at Legbrannock Cattery in Motherwell!