Scenes from a picnic - What you didn’t see when the transfer of power went down

“I hope she takes this opportunity to be statesman-like, and let it be Parnell’s day; it’s his inauguration,” Representative Jay Ramras (R-Fairbanks) says on the deck of his restaurant, Pike’s Landing, the day before the Fairbanks governor’s picnic. The picnic is where Governor Sarah Palin would turn the reins of the executive branch over to former Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. The deck overlooks the Chena River, and though the temperature is in the 70s, a haze of smoke from the wildfires near Fairbanks hangs over the water.