July 11 Today we went
to the Anchorage Museum . What a wonderful museum. It is huge so naturally we didn’t get to see
the whole thing but we watched a movie about the Eskimos and how they made
their clothing and the detail that went into the making of their clothing. You really get a full appreciation after
going through this museum of how long it took to make the clothing and what the
different designs meant. For example a
parka was made from antelope intestines and the intestines were cleaned and
stretched and laid out to dry and this process took weeks then they split the
intestines apart and it was like tissue paper and they had to take great care
sewing all the layers together to form the parker and then they decorated it
with tiny bird feathers and tiny beads that again took weeks to do. It was very elaborate and time consuming
work. With no electricity for light and
probably no eye glasses. After we
watched the movie then walked around the museum and looked at all the outfits
we had such an appreciation for the workmanship that went to the making of
them. It was so so interesting. Then another section we enjoyed was the
building of the pipeline. Some things
never change. They had the technology,
and the manpower but politics delayed the building of the pipeline for
years. And last but not least, we
enjoyed the gold rush exhibits. We spent
a good part of the day at the museum and didn’t come close to seeing everything
but we certainly enjoyed what we did see.
July 12 Today we went gold panning at Crow Creek Mine. It is located three miles from Girwood ,
Alaska .
This mining operation was started in 1898 and some of the original
buildings like the Blacksmith’s shop, Barn, Ice House, Commissary, Mine Owner’s
Cabin, Mess Hall, Meat Cache, and Bunk Hall still stand today. We only had shovels and gold pans to work
with, but people who come on a regular basis that are so called amateur gold
miners came with portable gold sluths and one guy had panned about $250 worth
of gold while we were there. Jim and I
only found 4 flakes in our pay dirt that was given to us when we paid to get
in. But our friends Larry and Mem found
at least 2 more flakes over what they found in their pay dirt that came with
their entrance fee. It was fun though
and we are getting more experience at gold panning.
July 13 To day we
went to the Alaska Wildberry Product store.
This store is known for its huge chocolate falls. (like in waterfalls only chocolate
falls). Jim loves chocolate so it was
hard to keep him from catching a drink from the falls haha. It smelled so wonderful too. This store had a little bit of everything
from tons of candy, t-shirts, jams, hats, sweatshirts, jewelry, books etc. We spent a lot of time shopping around and yes
we did buy a lot of chocolate.
July 14 We arrived in
Fairbanks . We are staying at the Riverview
Campground. It’s kind of rainy today so
we mapped out what we want to do for the week and decided to catch up on things
in the motorhome and our reading. Mem
and I decided to check out the North Pole, AK.
It was very neat and we enjoyed getting some of our Christmas shopping
done and we even got to visit with Santa and see some of the reindeer. Those reindeer have some strange looking
feet.
July 15 We always
like to go to the Visitor Centers when get to a new city so that’s what we did
today. I must say Fairbanks
has one of the nicest visitors centers.
They have a huge exhibit, several different videos that you can watch
and a movie theater. They also have
craft classes. Today they had jewelry
making classes, so I enrolled in the earring class with these cute Indian
girls. My earring is made from caribou
hide, porcupine needles and beads. It
was a lot of fun. We watched a movie
about the Northern Lights in the theater.
It was okay but since I was in Fairbanks
for a work trip in February 2002 I got to see the Northern Lights up close and
personal so the movie was just so so for me. I got in a tail end of a tour group given by an Indian lady
whose family clothes were on display and she explained what the different
pieces of clothing were used for. It was
very interesting. One of the saddest
things I learned on this whole trip at most of the visitors centers is that the
government rounded up the Indian children and sent them away from their
families to go school so they could learn English and the white man’s way of
life and that schooling caused many of the Indians to loose their craftsmanship
and culture. Now that same government that
spent all that money destroying their way of life is now spending more money
trying to teach these young Indian men and women what they took away from them
in the first place. We actually met a
lady who was one of those children that was taken away from her family and sent
to school. She told me she still
struggles with anger and many of her community members do to. While she was telling me her story I felt
like apologizes for the government. It
was so sad. On the brighter side we ate
lunch at the Cookie Jar. The waiter we
had was named Justin and he was from Clarksburg ,
WV (Jim’s hometown). He was a really great waiter and we had a
good time chatting with him. Jim thought
he knew his family back in WV. Small
world.
July 16 Today we took
the Discovery Riverboat ride down the Chena
River . Jim and I did this ride 10 years ago and we
still enjoyed it just as much this time.
Before we got on the riverboat, we had our picture taken in a room that
was -40 degrees. Fairbanks
is known for its -40 degree winters so this was a pretty cool thing to experience. We only stayed in the room for one minute but
that was plenty of time to get the drift that it was pretty darn cold. The boat ride starts off with a float plane demo taking off and landing on the river for us. And the whole time it is going on the captain on the boat is communicating with the pilot. It was pretty cool. On the boat ride we got to stop by the late
Susan Butcher’s famous Iditarod Sled Dog Training Facility which is now run by
her husband, Dave and two daughters. Her husband and some of the trainers came
out and did some demonstrations for us.
Then Dave hooked the dogs up to an ATV and the dogs took off around the
property. It was pretty cool to
watch. Then we went by an Indian village
and a young girl show us how to clean a salmon and how they hang the fish to
dry. She made it look very easy. Then we went by a reindeer field and the
captain explained how the reindeer shed their antlers every year which I did
not know. Then we got let off at the Indian
Village and got to visit various
speakers to learn about the various traditions.
It was very informative. After the boat ride we rode out to the Dredge
#8 Gold Panning Tour. Jim and I had done
this on our last trip here but it was called the El Dorado . They since sold out to this company. It was a little easier to pan for gold
here. After getting the history of the
old Dredge #8, they take you over to this building, hand you a poke of pay dirt
and a gold pan and you walk over to a table with warm running water and pan for
your gold. This was the first time I actually got down to my gold with
getting help. It was pretty exciting
when I finally saw the gold specks show up after swishing and swishing the dirt
and water. Jim and I combined our gold
and I had my gold from previous gold panning and I took it in and had it
weighed and the guy that weighed it said I
had the most gold he weighed all day.
$60 worth. WooHoo! Now that I finally got the hang of this, I can’t
wait to gold pan again!
July 17 Today we went
to Chena Hot Springs and the Chena Ice
Museum . The Ice
Museum was awesome. It had the most beautiful ice carvings done
by ice carving sculpture champions. It was
so unique. The building is kept at 25 degrees and they let you chose a down
parka to wear while in there and let me tell you it is very well worth it to
wear it; it kept us very warm. The
building has chandeliers that had led lights imbedded that changed colors. It had a full bar that had stools made of ice
with caribou pads for your comfort to sit on.
Appletinis were served in ice martini glasses. There was an igloo that you could crawl in
that had a xylophone made of ice that actually played. Two rooms were actually hotel rooms complete
with ice carved beds that you could really rent for the night and a chapel
where they actually held weddings. After
the Ice Museum ,
we had a really nice lunch in the Inn and then we went
over to the Hot Springs . What a way to end the day. The hot springs
felt wonderful and they were HOT .
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