Sun. June 20: Happy First Anniversary, Ken and Jen! And Happy Father’s Day to Marv and all dads. We had a very full day! We woke-up about 4:00 but dozed until 6:00. Marv went down and bought coffee to bring to the room, which we enjoyed with our simple breakfast of instant oatmeal and a fruit/cereal bar. The bus came at 8:30 to take us to the El Dorado Gold Mine Tour. It is an educational replica of both old-time and modern gold mining operations. It was mid-fifties and raining as we arrived after a quick stop at a segment of the Alaska Oil Pipeline. We got on an old narrow gauge railroad train, where we were entertained and the trip was narrated by “Earl”, who sang and played guitar and fiddle. We stopped within a permafrost tunnel and Tim demonstrated the parts of the mine that would be underground. They also showed the numerous fossil remains that can be found in this area from the Pleistocene era, including mammoths and American lion remains. We saw a camp for a prospector and the steam machinery used to sluice pay dirt, which would be piled with a dumping cart on pulleys. It was all pretty interesting. Then Yukon Yuma and Dexter, with the help of a few workers showed us how a modern mine would use a large water chute and a series of metal grids and Astroturf to refine the pay dirt now to finish-off with old fashioned panning. This part of the tour was outdoors in a steady rain. Finally we went into a covered area where we were given a bag of pay dirt and we each panned it (in warm water, luckily) to find whatever gold flecks we were able. When we finished we took into the Gift Shop where it was weighed and, if one wished, they would make jewelry out of one’s take. Ann had $12.00 worth, Shelby had $10.00 worth and we heard people say they had as much as $38.00 worth. With gold topping out on Saturday at over $1200 an ounce, it would be possible to have a tidy sum’s worth, However, Marv and I together only had $12.00 worth! I’m sure we ate our share’s worth in the warm cookies, hot chocolate and coffee which was available the whole time we were there. Marv found a t-shirt he liked at a reasonable price and we all piled back on the train to return to the bus, which took us back to the lodge. We only had about half an hour for lunch, so we had crackers, a cheese stick and cup-a-soup in our room before reporting downstairs for our next tour.
This time we got on the bus for about a 5 minute trip downriver to take the Sternwheeler Discovery trip on the Chena River. Our captain is a fourth generation Binkley whose great grandfather was a river boat captain and whose grandparents began the Discovery tours back in the nineteen fifties. Our narrator had been with the company for a long time and pointed things out to us along the river. There were unlimited lightly glazed doughnuts and hot coffee to enjoy as we cruised. We stopped beside the Trail Breaker Kennels of famous Iditarod racer Susan Butcher. She died a few years ago of leukemia, but her family continues the tradition of raising and racing Huskies. Her fifteen year old daughter was miked and, from the shore, she and a young man talked about the kennels and the puppies and racing. They hitched up a group of 10 dogs to a 4-wheeler and amid a cacophony of joyous barking the young man drove them around the large pond and through some hairpin turns. It was very exciting! The boat went on down river, passing some amazing homes. We went to where the Chena joins the Tanana (pronounced like Panama) River. This heavily silt-laden glacial river has laid down so many sand bars and tracks that the stern wheeler can no longer navigate it, so we turned around and stopped beside a native Athabaskan girl, who demonstrated how to prepare and smoke salmon chum to serve as food for dogs and told what they would do to prepare finer salmon for people. About then the rain finally quit and the sun broke through to become a nice afternoon. It was great timing because we went a little farther and the boat docked so we could disembark at the authentic replica village that the Binkley Company has built. Staffed entirely by young (mostly college age students) natives, we were treated to demonstrations of (1) how they made clothing and did bead work, particularly on moose hide, (2) a trapper’s home and cache, with a multitude of different animal hides, and (3) what a hunters’ camp would have been before western influence. During the talk there a bald eagle flew over our heads and disappeared into the trees beyond! At that part they had four reindeer in an enclosure (in the wild they are considered caribou) including a month-old calf. So cute! We had about twenty minutes to walk around the area on our own before we got back on the boat. We were treated to a smoked salmon spread made with cream cheese on crackers, which was quite delicious! The trip back up river took a little longer as we fought the current. After more time in the Gift Shop we returned to the Lodge about dinner time. We couldn’t fit in everything we wanted to do so we chose to grab another light snack in our rooms and then do what we could. I really wanted to go downtown for their Summer Solstice Festival. But I was outnumbered so Ann, Shelby, and Marv decided we should take a shuttle to the highly regarded museum at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The driver assured us it was the finest one in Alaska and it is quite spectacular. We got there about 7:00 and it was all we could do to seed the many fine exhibits before it closed at 9:00. They have a lot of information on the Aurora Borealis, including a film showing what causes it. I found that particularly fascinating. They had many displays about the pioneer women of Alaska, the Inuit cultural life, territory and statehood history, Russian influence, minerals and ores, prehistoric and present day animal life, and more. Upstairs there is an entire floor devoted to two thousand years of Alaskan art. It was a lot to take in! The shuttle picked us up at 9:00 and the driver kindly took us by the Horticulture Gardens and Caribou research pens, just because she thought we’d enjoy them. Back at the Lodge we went to the grill so Ann and Shelb could share a dessert and Marv and I could enjoy our first Alaskan beer, sweet potato fries (Marv) and a Trapper’s (sort of like a Greek) Salad (me). We returned to our room to pack things up so we can put our bags out at 7:30. They will be taken to Denali for us tomorrow or taken to a storage place if we mark them as not needed until we get on the ship. Marv and I ended our already very long day by going outside at midnight to enjoy the famous Midnight Sun of the summer solstice.
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