A commercial enterprise at the end of the road is Chena Hot Springs. They offer resort style accommodations and an RV park, and the Aurora Ice Museum. It is a nice drive up and the museum is interesting. It is the only Ice Museum open year-round. Inside it is kept to a cool 20 degrees by using an ammonia absorption refrigeration system using geothermal heat. In fact the entire Hot Springs Resort gets its power from the geothermal power plant, totally “off the grid” 30 miles from a power source. There was a free tour of the power plant we could have gone to, but discovered that after we had left. It was really hard to get quality pictures inside the museum, but we’ve included some of the pictures anyway so you can get the idea. They have booked weddings there, really short ones because of the temperature, and also will rent one of the 4 rooms overnight if you enjoy sleeping on a block of ice. It was interesting to us that they used caribou skins extensively inside on the beds and on the bar stools. The guide told us, and we haven’t verified it, that there are 50,000 hairs per square inch on the caribou, and they are hollow. When we sat on one of the stools, it wasn’t cold at all after a few seconds!
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