Today was the official beginning of our cruisetour. The beautiful weather has continued (it was in the 80s today!) and we are thankful for it. Of course, we are running out of t-shirts to wear, but it’s a small price to pay for all the sunshine.
For our first activity, we boarded an old stern wheel riverboat and cruised down the Chena river for three hours. It was really cool, because every 20 minutes or so, we’d stop for a demonstration of some kind.
The first one was a floatplane demo. We watched the plane taxi in the water alongside us, then rev up the engine and ascend. It was so cool! We could actually see the pilot in the cockpit as he flew right past us.
The next display was at Susan Butcher’s home. She was the first woman to win the Iditarod dog race, then she won it three more times. She died from cancer a couple years ago, but her husband and daughters still run the kennel, and they told us all about the dogs. They brought out some of the puppies, which were solo cute. Then they hooked up the adult dogs to an ATV with its engine removed. As soon as the dogs saw it, they went NUTS! They barked up a storm, running in circles around their dog houses, and jumping up on top of them. They were jumping everywhere, and they all wanted to pull the cart. It’s obvious how much they love to run and pull.
The next stop was at the end of the river, where the Chena meets the…um, other river whose name I now forget. But it was pretty cool to see, because it’s where the freshwater Chena river meets the other river of melted glacial runoff.
Our last stop was a replica of a Native Alaskan village. It was supposed to represent a typical Athabascan village, where the Athabascan people showed off their way of life. We saw them model beautiful fur coats, a salmon fishing wheel, little camping huts, and even reindeer. (My smart friend Edra informed us that reindeer are domesticated caribou – so they’re caribou out in the wild, and reindeer when they’re raised on a farm.)
Reindeer with BIG antlers
Athabaskan house
I thought the drying salmon looked good; Mark did not
Big bear, little boy
They brought the sled dogs over to the village, too, so Mark loved that. He was really excited to pet all the dogs. But those dogs are HYPER, and never stayed in one place for very long, so they were hard to pet.
Then it was back on the river boat for the cruise home. Edra and Mark decided they needed a little snack, so they purchased reindeer hot dogs to eat. Yeah, that’s right, REINDEER hot dogs! They were all right – a little fatty, but not all that different from a regular hot dog.
Now that's a good (reindeer) hot dog!
The narrator told us all about the homes along the river, and he seemed to know everyone who lived in them. Fairbanks is a pretty small town!
The tour ended back at our hotel in time for lunch. Then it was on to our second activity for the day, the El Dorado Gold Mine.
The mine was about 30 minutes outside of town. We drove out of the valley and up into the mountains, and made a short stop before the mine. We stopped to see the Alaska pipeline! The pipeline itself wasn’t that exciting, but it was interesting to learn that it runs the length of the whole state, and pumps out a million gallons of oil a day.
Vic sitting on the Alaskan Pipe Line
Mark, of course, missed it all. He was busy sleeping on the bus.
But he woke up in time for the gold mine. We hopped on a narrow gauge railroad car, and listened to a local guy relive the time he met Johnny Cash. It was certainly a high point in his life, and he relived it all for the next hour, even talking like Johnny Cash, and singing Johnny Cash songs.
The train dipped into a tunnel, then stopped inside the mine. A coal miner (a fake one) explained all about excavating for gold, but to be honest with you, I don’t remember much of it. He also narrated some other spots, telling how the miners lived and how they got the ore out of rocks they mined.
But the exciting part for us was the demo. The two hosts (who owned the mine and are proud Alaskans) were a couple of characters. The first was a woman named Yukon. She wore gold rings and bracelets, and carried around two gold nuggets worth $7000 in her jeans pocket. When the demo started up, she called out, “You hear that? That’s the sound of money!” She certainly seemed to love her job!
I can’t remember her partner’s name, but he was a crusty old character himself. He’s exactly what you’d picture an Alaskan man looks like. Funny hat, big beard, jeans and boots. He dumped a craneful of dirt into a sluice, and ten sent a high-pressure waterfall through it to wash out the dirt. Then he handed over the trapped dirt to his interns, who showed us how to pan for gold.
They panned out about $35 worth in just a few minutes.
Then came the really fun part – WE got to pan for gold! It was hilarious! No one in our group really knew what we were doing. We dumped the little bag of dirt into our pans, then swirled water around the pans waiting for the gold flakes to appear. The interns finally helped us separate the gold flakes out. Edra was hilarious – she had a big pile of gold flakes, $24 worth! But she turned to help Wende, and as she did, she almost tipped her whole pan into the water. Luckily, she’s got good reflexes and saved it.
Here’s the nugget I found – it weighed 19 ounces and clocked in with a value of $40,000:
Eureka!
Just kidding…Wende was the big winner, with $25 worth of gold. I had a whopping $4.50 worth, and Mark panned an even more impressive $3. He mistakenly handed over a little container of rocks he’d saved, so that the guy weighing the containers eyes grew really big (until I explained it was rocks, not gold nuggets).
Our first moose sighting!
Then it was back on the train for the end of the tour. They mine staff all came outside to wave goodbye and wish us well. Some even helped lock the car doors. We waved back at them, and prepared for the journey back. It took all of two minutes, and the staff we’d just left walked right beside the train, unlatching the doors as we arrived. We were really cracking up at that.
We decided on a nice dinner out tonight, and cabbed it over to the Pump House. It was right on the river, with a spectacular view. I also liked the garden outside, which was rich and colorful. The growing season in Alaska is short – only 100 days, but the sun shines 24 hours a day during those days. As a result, enormous flowers and leafy vegetables fill the flower boxes and gardens (cabbage grows to 20 pounds!).
Here’s the garden in front of the Pump House:
By the time we finished, we were full and happy, but not tired. Then someone mentioned it was 9:30, and I gasped. It seriously looked like it was 2 p.m., not almost 10.
I don’t know if I could live in Alaska, with its extreme weather – four hours of sun during winter, and no dark during summer. But it sure is fun to vacation here – you can tour and explore the state until all hours of the night with unlimited energy. Even the mere suggestion of light has kept me awake these past few days. There’s a little sliver that peaks in through a gap in the curtains, and I’ve woken at all hours, amazed to see it’s still sunny. My body loves the endless hours to fill with activities, but it’s starting to mess with my head a little bit.
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