The Great Northern Adventure, Day 7: Gold

Friday, July 9, 2010

We walked to "downtown" Fairbanks, finding a coffee place called Mocha Dan's where we got some breakfast sammiches and coffee, avoiding hotel restaurants and their $14/person sorry buffets.

A relatively short ride on the bus to a riverboat ride on the paddlewheeler "Discovery III."

This took about three hours, including a one hour stop at a mock native village culture display.  The "native" chicks were very cute,

and we learned a lot as well.  We also saw a famous dog musher (Lance Mackey), as well as the widower of another famous dog musher (Susan Butcher).

From the boat ride we went to Gold Dredge #8, which ran from 1929 to 1959.

It was amazing how that process worked and how damaging it was to the land as well as the men running the dredge with its liquid mercury gold dust collection system.  We also had lunch there.  Miner Stew, biscuits, muffins, and horrible iced tea.  (I'm always amazed how often something so simple is done so badly.)

After the dredge we went to the El Dorado Gold Mine.

We had a train tour of traditional mining, followed by a demonstration of sluice panning, after which we each got a bag of pay dirt that we were able to pan ourselves.  That was a lot of fun.  I had about 6.5 grains of gold in mine, worth around $24 (gold is ~$1200 oz. right now.)  I have no idea what to do with it.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Alaska Pipeline.  It was somewhat interesting.

Tristan dances about architecture

In the evening, Jennifer and I took Dad to a restaurant called Thai House.

It was really good.  Being uncertain whether or not Dad would eat squid, when we got our calimari appetizer, I described  the squid bits with the generic "seafood" term.  Dad cleaned his plate, and we brought our leftovers back for Kayley, who really enjoyed them.

We finished off the night (since it was still really light out) by heading back downtown to the Fudge Pot.  Can't go wrong with fudge.

The Great Northern Adventure, Day 6: Visiting North Pole, Meeting Santa, and Eating Reindeer

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Woke up in Beaver Creek.  Crossed back into Alaska, stopping at the border for some photos.


We stopped at a visitor center, with bathrooms and nice views.




We stopped at yet another Westmark, this time in Tok for a proper lunch.  This one included red snapper, reindeer sausage, chicken, and sweet potato fries.  It really hit the spot.

Back on the road, stopping at Rika's Roadhouse for some strawberry and rhubarb pie and ice cream.

Yet another stop, this time at North Pole, Alaska.  We went to Santa's house, met the man and his reindeer (whose relatives were quietly digesting inside us at the time), and perused the tourist wonderwasteland that is Santa's house.

By the early evening we were at our hotel in Fairbanks: The Westmark on Noble @ 10th Avenue.  We're here for two nights, which is a nice break from all the packing and unpacking.  We said goodbye to our motorcoach driver and handed him some cash somewhere in the neighborhood of the "suggested gratuity" amount of $4/person/day.  (More on tipping later, what a racket.)

We scheduled our first "excursion": the Alaska Salmon Bake in Fairbanks.  We took Dad with us because we knew he'd enjoy it too.  We were picked up in a blue-painted school bus and dropped off at Pioneer Park, where the salmon bake is.

We had all-you-can-eat fire-roasted wild salmon, prime rib, fried cod and halibut, sides, desserts, and drinks.  We ate outside in the dry 80F air.  It was great to just sit outside, eat, and relax.

We walked around Pioneer Park to help digest some of that fantastic food, and caught the 9:20pm school bus back to the Westmark.

This far north, sunset is at 12:20 am and sunrise is at 3:29 am, though it never really gets all that dark in between.  We've never seen anything like it.