Tour day in Fairbanks, Alaska

Hi again,

Be sure to look at the other post on Bears and Eagles that I posted earlier today.

Hopefully I can get in our Fairbanks adventure today as well. We spent the better part of a week in Fairbanks, seeing the city, taking a couple of tours; one to the El Dorado Mine and one on the Riverboat Discovery, going to their Golden days parade and Farmers Market(we all love the various farmers markets), visiting the Museum of Art and History at the University of Alaska, the dog mushers museum, picking blueberries(lots of blueberries) and generally having a good time.

Chuck, Jane and Tucker(their miniature duchsund) are great to travel with, they enjoy seeing and doing new things as much as we do and are always ready to try something new. None of us are much for tours but we thought these two, the one to the mine and the discovery boat tour were worth taking and we really enjoyed them both, as you will see.


At the mine tour they took you on a simulated train trip through a typical mine operation during the gold rush, this is still an active mine so there is still gold being mined there.

We learned a lot about gold, it's hard to mine, it's heavier than rocks, sand and water, it's valuable, very shiny and fun to try panning.

We all did pan for gold and we were very timid indeed we all thought we would lose the gold in the water,(they only give you a small bag to pan) but after some help, we all got a little gold, any we panned was ours to keep. Morris got 7 grains of gold valued at $21.00 and I got 6 grains of gold valued at $18.00.

Of course, what can you do with the gold we got but put it in a locket for me to wear!

Yup, gold is nice!!

On the Discovery Riverboat trip we were on a working sternwheeler ship, we had a narrator that explained some of the history of Fairbanks, we saw a float plane land and take off on the river, we had a talk and demonstration at the Idiarod champion, Susan Bucher's dog mushing kennels and stopped at an example of a working Athabascan summer fish camp. We saw some beautiful and some interesting houses on the river, as the captian said, Alaskans are a very independent lot. All of it was really interesting, we topped it off by sampling smoked fish on the return trip back.

The Stern wheeler, Discovery, it's really quite a beautiful ship.

Susan Boucher the 3 time Ididarod champion we found out, passed away from cancer, but her partner still raises and races husky dogs, he gave us a demonstration and showed us some puppies and how they handle the dogs. They don't need to train them to race they just love to pull!

They handle the puppies often so they are used to people,one training exercise is to get them to crawl over the logs which was quite cute.

Getting ready to pull the 4 wheeler(sleds are for winter).

Off they go!

Hello to everyone 9/10/09

We are in Haines, Alaska right now which is lush and green and it's raining, which is fitting to the rainforest which it is! There are hundreds of resident bald eagles in Haines and we have seen many. They are really beautiful to see. We see them flying around fishing in the local waters, in their huge nests, and just sitting in the trees looking majestic. There are many known viewing spots and we have tried to go and visit as many as we can. In October and November thousands of them migrate to here for the winter.

People also come to Haines to fish and see the bears fishing. We saw a Grizzly fishing in the Chilkoot river on our first day here which was pretty amazing.

I'm at the Library now and Morris has offered to do the laundry so I can work on the blog. I pulled the good duty today. The libraries have been wonderful through out our trip, they are warm and welcoming and most have free or relatively free internet. We don't get internet very often and we just wanted to make sure we said hello and thanks for all the comments we have had from our friends and family and we love hearing from all of you. In case I don't get much else posted today I just wanted everyone to know that we are enjoying every minute of our adventure and hearing from you.

We realized after we left Homer, that we are now pretty much on our return trip. Fall is already here and the "Termination Dust" (SNOW) is not much behind.

So just in case I don't get much else published today, here are some eagle and bear photos to tease you into what is coming next!!!

This one you will have to look close, on the right is one of the eagles, in the center is the huge nest and in the nest is another eagle eating.

Delta Junction to Eielson Airforce Base near Fairbanks.

Hi again,

Continuing on our Alaska Odessey we headed to Delta Junction which is at the end of the Alcan highway. It's hard for us to believe we have just travelled the entire Alaskan Highway. Just before Delta Junction we start to see the really big snow covered mountains and start to get excited about seeing the Denali National park, but first we will visit Fairbanks and it's surrounding area.

We then continued on to Rika's Roadhouse, here we were able to get our first glimpse of the oil pipeline. Roadhouses were spaced about a day’s travel apart for travelers in the 1800’s and 1900’s. Rika’s is now a museum and interesting place to visit still. It had a beautiful garden planted which was planted as it was in it’s hey day.

Fairbanks, has it’s own charm. Another reason I was excited to visit the Fairbanks area, was that my brother Pat, was stationed at Eielson Air Force base during the Korean conflict in 1950-52. their job was guarding the planes that the AirForce moved from base to base to protect them from sabotage during the conflict. We took a tour of the base so I could take some photos and send them to Pat. It is still an active base so the photos were limited to a beautiful memorial park and a few other areas.

Enjoy the photos!

Arriving at Delta Junction the end of the Alaskan Highway or Alcan, quite a journey already, we started the Alcon in Dawson Creek, British Columbia:

Riks's Roadhouse museum, gardens and restored homestead.

This was our first glimpse of the Alaskan pipeline and it was across the Tanana river which we were kind of anxious about, hope it never springs a leak here!



We took a tour of Eielson AirForce base, the base my brother Pat was stationed during the Korean conflict, I wanted to take photos for him to see it's been over 50 years since he has seen it. I did ask and the they said the only original structure from that time was the chapel, but since it's a working base I was not able to get a photo of it. There was a guy who was there about the same time 1955 touring with his 2 sons and 1 grandson, and it was pretty cool seeing it through his eyes too!

The third photo is the orginal gate which Pat might recognize, I'll also show you the current gate which is totally in a different direction.

The Old Gate which is now near the Heritage Park:

The new gate.

Hertiage park where many ceremonies are held, soldiers coming in and going home, medal ceremonies, holidays etc.

I told Pat I would take a photo of the ball fields if I found them. This is what is here now. Pat said that theirs were makeshift ballfields. They played lots of teams here including a midnight tournament with the Fairbanks teams on the summer soltice. They played without lights. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pat was an excellent ball player in high school, college and then in the army, actually all my brothers were champion ball players. I took an imaginery turn at bat, which you will see! :)

Chicken Alaska to Tok

Hi Everyone,

Continuing in our journey in Alaska, you must pass through Tok, twice, once coming in and once leaving. Tok is essentially a highway town, most businesses, campgrounds, and housing is located within about 3 blocks of the Alcan Highway. We diverted from the Alcan Highway when we decided to go to the Dempster Highway at Whitehorse, Yukon, we will complete that short part of the Alcan on our way back.

It’s pretty much downhill from Chicken to Tok.

We were a little afraid when we saw this sign, we had heard horror stories about the mosquitos in Alaska, only time will tell...

We still were climbing when we left Chicken and the views were beautiful.

Alaska names their Highways, there are not that many and now we are on the Taylor Highway.

This is part of the site of one of the largest fires in Alaska about 1.2 mile acres. After the fire, the first flora to respond is fireweed, then follows alder bushes and then cottonwoods and then spruce; we have seen this time and time again. There are a lot of forest fires in Alaska the terrain is so forested and so immense that fires often start by a lightening strike.

As the Tok sign says we are at milepost 1314 on the Alcan highway.

This is Willards, which was important to us because, when we were in Chicken we discovered when we arrived, with an inside rear flat tire. It was lucky we didn't blow the other rear tire on the top of the world highway. As I said in the previous blog, there isn't any electric, water or phone service in Chicken, the only way to communicate with the outside world of Tok(about 80 mountainous highway miles away)was by Skype at the Campground computer system and it was iffy if they got the information. We thought we might have to ride in the next day to Tok by car and have someone come out to fix it, but about 3 hours later in the evening, here comes the guy from Willards, somehow they got our GPS location and sent out the truck!

Tok is kind of fun, it's all on the highway and there are some interesting sites.

These next photos are for our friend Skip to identy and get back to us! :)

Ferry to the Top of the World highway and Chicken

Hi everyone,

We have internet tonight. We are in Seward, Alaska on the southeast coast. But I'm taking you back to our leaving Dawson City, Yukon on the free Ferry the George Black Ferry to go over the Top of the World Highway to our first touch of Alaska and to Chicken.

We can not believe we finally are in Alaska and it's we've really had such a nice time so far, it's hard to believe that each place we go is so beautiful. Everywhere we go it's just such a wonderful experience. We love the people, land and are enjoying every minute.

Tonight, we are going to show you our trip over the Yukon River. Jane and I went over with the cars and then we waited for Chuck and Morris to come over with the RV's. We were not sure if they would be able to come over together or one at a time, the ferry is really not all that big, but as we watched they actually put 4 Rv's on the same ferry!

After that is was quite a trip to go over the top of the world highway. We have heard all kinds of horror stories about RV's rolling off, and the road was very narrow and there is not any guard rails etc., but people said if you go slow you "should" be alright!! Well, we did make it, but don't believe anything you hear about the road being paved, that might have been about 50 years ago, but not now, every once and a while we saw a yellow stripe down the middle, but that was it.

We did make it to Chicken, Alaska, what a great place, there are 3 RV parks and 3 businesses in the "downtown chicken area". There is no electricity and they have to have their water brought in and the only phone service is by internet!

Enjoy the photos:

Jane relaxing on the cool log seat, waiting for the guys to ferry over:

Our first sight of the border between Canada and Alaska!!! Yoo Hoo.

To the Pokergirls, check out the cool name of the border crossing!

They have really interesting outhouses in Chicken.

Notice the Emperor Goose in the Attack Chicken pen :)

The Dempster Highway

Seems like we have traveled 3000 miles just to get to the start of the Dempster Highway, and after lots of planning and shuffling and thinking, we were about to embark on our journey. The campground we stayed in at Dawson City, agreed to let us park our RV's for half the cost per day as we traveled the Dempster; and Chuck and Jane found a great place to board our 5th companion their dog Tucker. We packed our cars with our camping equipment, checked and rechecked that we had all we needed to head for The Dempster highway, Artic circle and Inuivik. We planned all the meals had extra water and topped off our gas tanks at the last gas station just before the Dempster and then we were off. It was a sunny beautiful start to our day and we were just awestruck at the beauty, remoteness, wildness, flora, fawna and so looking forward to exciting trip:

OK guys, cut the knoodling and let's get the picture and be on our way!

It was just exciting actually standing on the highway. Oh, did I mention it is 500 miles of gravel and dirt and quite exciting to drive and to meet other vehicle on the road. We needed to watch out for flying rocks, so we always slowed down when vehicles passed us.

The beauty and remoteness was extraordinary:

We saw Moose and Dall Sheep, yes, and we did see the moose at Two Moose Lake:

Look close and you start to see the Dall sheep, right where our guide book said they might be, we couldn't believe it!

There are some provincial campgrounds on the Dempster and they have these cool screened in shelters with a potbelly stove and picnic tables for the campers and travelers to have their meals. They also provide bear proof food lockers and trash containers, but no water, so you have to bring that in with you.

More knoodling going on:

The wildflowers were spectacular.

The weather was deteriorating rapidly as we approached Eagle Plains, the halfway point on the Dempster to Inuvik. It was cold and rainy and we decided not to tent camp and see if they had a room at the Eagle Plain Hotel, our other option was to sleep in the cars; thankfully they had a room and we were just in time to get supper before they closed at 8:00 p.m.

The resident dogs were a nice touch.

The next morning we were up early to head for the Artic Circle and beyond. And what to our wondering eyes does appear, but snow! We couldn't think of a more perfect way to get to the Artic Circle.

WE MADE IT ABOVE THE ARTIC CIRCLE... We brought the bottle of wine I got for my retirement gift from Sheila, my partner in crime at the University of Minnesota, to toast the going over the Artic Circle. It was 0 degrees celsius and 32 degrees Farenheit when we got to the Circle monument. It has been a long way from home and this is just one of our goals for the trip, it was well worth the journey so far.

Because of the deteriorating weather we decided that morning to head back down the Dempster and tent camp at the one of the earlier campgrounds at the lower altitude we passed on our way here the, Tombstone provicial campground. We were hoping the weather would improve. We hated to miss out on Inuvik but it would have been a pretty rough trip with the weather, and later that day we heard they closed the free Ferry at Fort Mcpherson for 9 hours, so we would probably have had to sleep in our cars there.

We did enjoyed our trip back down the Dempster to the Tombstone Campground and were eager to test our our camping gear, Chuck and Jane's gear is pretty new and we haven't used ours for quite awhile, we had a great evening, nice dinner at the kitchen shelter, a great fire, and we were taking photos at midnight it was so light out.

Good Night:

Sleep Tight:

It's Midnight:

THE END!!!!

Dawson City

Hello again,

It's been awhile since I was able to use the internet, our weeks stay in Dawson City was split between Dawson City and the Dempster Highway. Dawson City is charming, most of the buildings have been preserved from the turn of the century, they have wooden boardwalks and the streets are not paved and are dirt, it's like going back in time. The people are extremely friendly and we really enjoyed the city, I just happened to be in the right place to take a bead embroidery class at the Dho'jan, zho Native Cultural Center which was a highlight for me, and the dance hall, Diamond Gert's was the highlight for Morris!(you'll see in the photos) Dawson City also has an annual music festival that we were able to attend after our trip to the Dempster highway that kind of capped off the week.

The Dempster highway was spectacular and hope you see it in the photos by itself it was a major highlight, 285 miles one way of gravel and dirt and yet so much beauty to take in, we ofter were left speechless.

Hope you enjoy the journey.

Dawson City pre Dempster

Diamond Gerte's can-can show:

Morris was chosen to join the Can Can Ladies and dance with them and as you see he had a great time and for his reward they gave him one of the garters that they wore:

These photos were taken post Dempster Highway, which I want to show you on a separate blog, they are of the music festival and the bead embroidery at the Native Cultural Center.

During the concerts two hangliders joined the party:

There was some fun people watching as well:

Here are some photos of the exhibits at the Cultural museum and of me taking the bead embroidery class which I just fell into and it was a wonderful experience:

The last photo is of the smoke we were starting to experience from one of the many forest fires in both the Yukon and in Alaska, it's part of living in such a large area with so much forest surrounding all the cities and communities. We will experience more of this as we travel towards Fairbanks in the coming weeks.