One thing about an RV caravan is that they will keep you busy! We arrived on Sunday after a pretty nice drive north west from Tok. On Monday we started the day heading to the Riverboat Discovery for a fabulous cruise. The boat itself was interesting.
We had been warned the best view was on top and the left side, so that is where we sat. Kevin and I chose the covered top seating while some of our group chose the open seating. We got a fun demonstration of a seaplane take off and landing.
We cruised by an abandoned shipyard. Shipping is why Fairbanks was founded. It was as far as the riverboat supplying miners could make it. There was lots and lots of river travel since the area is so forested and remote. Rivers were the highways of the times.
We paddled past Susan Butcher’s famous dog sled training camp. She won the Iditarod four times in five years, only the second woman ever to win the race. She is a legendary figure in the dog sled world. Though she died in 2006, her husband and daughter continued her work. Her daughter Tekna and some of the other folks gave us a fabulous demonstration of how the dogs train and play.
I know videos are a pain to watch here, but take the trouble to click on this link to see (and hear) the dogs in action. They are having fun!
After the dogs, we visited a recreated Chena native village. The docents were all natives from the area, and they talked about life before and after Europeans arrived. We saw a group of reindeer they let out each day, conveniently just as the riverboat comes by.
The fish wheel is still used to catch salmon and other fish. We were shown how they were filleted, dried, (tall tent roof structure), and smoked (large wooden structure). A cache to store food is to the right of the smoke house.
We got off the boat to have more direct presentations by the docents. The trapper cabin was recreated in a very traditional style.
We were shown examples of the numerous fur-bearing animals the natives used in their daily lives by a young woman sitting at the entry to a cache cabin. Cabins were a post-European concept when the natives stopped being nomadic.
There were examples of more traditional shelters too. Sorry I didn’t get a good picture of the fur-covered structure. It was done like, made with steamed north limbs. It was used as longer-term housing for families. The spruce limb shelters were for hunting camps.
This ride was a true class act, and I would highly recommend anyone in the area to attend!
After the boat ride, we had dinner at the dining area associated. Not bad – beef stew, roasted veggies, (slightly stale) rolls, brownies. The managed the crowds of a few hundred very efficiently.
After a lunch in the motorhome, we regrouped to go to the Ice Museum in downtown Fairbanks. It is one of those oddities that are locally interesting. It is run by an ice carver, and our tour started with seeing how the ice is harvested and cut by renowned carvers every year. Then lights were turned on to show a bunch of carvings that had been done. People were invited inside to take pictures and even slide down the ice slide! Sorry I didn’t get a better picture, but here is Kevin sliding. Really, it is, trust me!
The second day here was also fairly full. We took a bus trip today to the Gold Dredge #8, a National Historic Landmark. Another fabulous trip. The first thing you see on the grounds is part of the Alaska Pipeline. The exterior you see is an insulation jacket around the pipeline itself to protect the permafrost.
Much of the pipeline is underground, but just under half is above ground.
When we got past the pipeline, we boarded a cute historic train that would take us to the dredge. I can’t believe I didn’t get any pictures of it! The ride was interesting in and of itself. We had a musician who joined us as we were boarding.
The train took us through some left over areas.
There was a steam engine they operated to show how the carts of ore from drift mining were moved from the mine to the processing facilities.
While hard rock drift mining was done in some places, the bigger claims used placer mining from the streams. The dredge dug the shore with its big shovel, grabbing the rock into the buckets on the right. Then the buckets dumped the rock into a big grinding facility that eventually moved the rock through filters that captured the heavy gold while moving the waste rock to the chute on the back to the thrown out. It was very effective and an absolute environmental nightmare. There are piles of placer waste rock thrown into huge rows all through the area.
After being shown the outside of the dredge (no one can go inside), we went to a spot to pan gold for ourselves! We had a demonstration, then everyone was given a small sack of “pay dirt”, a pan, and a big wash pan full of water. The gold we found we could keep, and I made a whopping $8! Kevin made $12, and we paid them to put it in a small locket attached to a magnet. It is a total racket because almost everyone paid way more than we made in gold, and it was great fun.
Afterwards the bus took us back to the campground for a bit so people with pets could deal with them. We then went to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska. Nice museum, but smaller than I expected. They showed two interesting films though. One was about the methods faculty, staff, and students use to find and recover fossils in Alaska. There are huge fossil beds that have disgorged hundreds of finds. Many are dinosaur fossils, but they also discussed the plant fossils and how those are discovered. The second move was about Auroras, and I finally understand what makes the light and colors! Well done.
Our next two days were free of planned group activities. I will cover what we did later.