Denali!!

 Our trip south from Fairbanks felt like a normal highway, hardly any frost heaves, drove normal highway speeds almost all day.

We did stop in Nenana, Alaska to place a bet on the Nenana Ice Classic. The Ice Classic is Alaska's greatest guessing game!  In Nenana during1917 a group of engineers surveying for the Alaska Railroad bet $800 putting in their guesses when the river would break up. This fun little guessing game has turned into an incredible tradition that has now continued for over 106 years.

So, the river freezes over in October & November and just gets thicker every month.  The Ice Classic plants a tripod two feet into the ice on the Tanana River between the highway bridge & the railroad bridge which is just up river from the Nenana River.  The tripod which is 300 feet from shore is connected via a cable to a clock.  Once the cable is connected it is watched 24 hours a day to prevent cheating.  When the ice starts breaking up and the tripod starts floating away the cable breaks & the clock stops.  That’s the winning time.

It’s a  big deal!  The ice usually breaks up in last two weeks of April or first two weeks in May.  The 2022 winning pay out was $202,000.  So all three if us entered!

Pulled into our campground in Denali and immediately headed to 49th Street Brewery.  Great beer & food.  This is the area where the movie “Into the Wild” actually happened & was filmed.  It’s about a young guy who gives up all his possessions and moves into the Alaskan Wilderness, living in an old bus.  We saw the restoration process on the real bus & the brewery has the movie prop set up.

Sara’s house is only 159 miles from here, wonder if she’s home?

We had a dinner show lined up for the next evening, kind of a musical story about early Denali.  It was fun, the waiters were the singers, musicians and actors.  Lots of fun.

Next day it was a bus tour into Denali.  It is a limited access park.  Private cars can only go in about 15 miles.  The official bus tours go in to mile marker 43.  The road after that was damaged by a landslide, so I’m ok stopping there.  We did see a grizzly bear!  It was a little cloudy so the pictures of Denali are iffy, but we could see the north peak through our binoculars.

Did I mention it was a long day!

Mica had some extra excursions, she e-bikes with a bunch of fellow caravaners.

ATV touring with Pamela & Ray, with about four other couples of the caravan. I might have been a little dusty!!

We all went on a white water raft ride, it was on the Nenana River and was class 1,2,3 & 4  rapids. We chose the oar boat, that means the river guide did all the paddling, or oaring, we just had to hold on & relax.  The hardest part was putting on our dry suits.  Since the water just came off the glacier it was a tad chilly, well it was freaking freezing so dry suits for everyone!

I took videos of some of the rapids, I’ll try to figure out a way to update a couple sometime.

Of course the perfect way to round out a great week is find a pizza / brewery!  

Only downside to Denali is it was really WINDY when we were there, couple of times I thought CC was going to roll over.  But it was a beautiful stop!

Onto Anchorage….

Fairbanks!

Well, the drive from Tok to Fairbanks was uneventful.  Actual paved roads with stripes & everything!  We even drove at our normal cruising speed, ahhh!!!  We did stop at Delta Junction, the official end of the Alaskan Highway.  Got our official certificate 1,422 miles of “interesting” highway….

Pulled into River’s Edge Campground, full hookups with 50amp.  I’m not sure how to act.  No power management to think about.  They had a nice RV wash bay so CC got the much-needed bath.  I didn’t go all crazy because we’ll have more dirty roads coming in the future, but we did a thorough job.  I certainly feel better.

We’re here for five days and the Caravan has plenty of things planned for us.  We went grocery shopping, did some laundry and relaxed with friends….

The first day was a visit to the Ice Museum, we learned about the Ice Sculpture Park and saw some examples.  Plus, a demonstration by one of the carvers on how they shape & color the creations.

The afternoon was a paddle boat ride on the Chenoa River in Fairbanks.  I can hardly explain how interesting it was.  The boat was a functioning stern driven paddle wheel and came with an excellent guide that explained the history of the boat & five generations of family still running it.  Plus, several First Nation crew members who were going to explain river life along the way.

We came up to a dog sled kennel & training facility right along the river.  The boat tied up just offshore and the people on shore were miked up and explained that this is Susan Butcher’s kennel.   She is pretty famous in Alaska; she is a four-time winner of the Iditarod Dog race.  Her husband & daughters are maintaining her legacy of high-quality mushers.

A lot of barking going on!

The newest additions to the pack, the training begins early!

After an interesting talk & dog sled demonstration we moved on to a recreation to a native fish camp & village.  First stop was a local who explained how the early inhabitants of the area subsisted on salmon.  Showing how they cleaned, filleted, scored & smoked their fish.

All filleted, scored & ready to smoke.

The boat then pulled up to shore and the entire boat was split into three groups.  From there we went to various “stations” where local members of different tribes talked about their heritage & living practices, from fishing to hunting to survival in the harsh Alaskan weather.  It was very well done & incredibly interesting.  An afternoon well spent.  Plus, the speaker from Butcher’s kennel was on site.  We were able to purchase a nice children’s book about her favorite dog.  We also decided to purchase one of the puppies, Granite!

Best thing about Granite? We don’t need to pick up poop in the campground.  “Who’s a good dog?”

Next day we went to Dredge #8.  One of the last gold dredges to be used in Alaska.  When we got to the site walked up to our first up close look at the Alaska Pipeline, we were met with an old coot, Dexter, who worked on the installation of the pipeline in the late 70’s.  The Alaska Pipeline is about 800 miles long, stretching from the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay to the ice-free port of Valdez.  It spans three mountain ranges, 500 rivers & streams, cost $8 billion dollars in 1977.  It took 14 months to complete and started pumping crude oil in June 1977.

Of course, now I want to climb on it!!

I don’t want to bore you with too many more facts, but…. The pipeline is 4 ft in diameter and is well insulated.  Over half of the 800 miles is above ground so the permafrost doesn’t melt and cause the pipeline to break.  Plus, it spans three major fault lines.  The above ground sections are carried on a vertical support system that allows the pipeline to move as it expands & contracts.  Plus, it can move during earthquakes.  It’s not really anchored down, only at some strategic locations,  it sits on the cross section of the vertical supports on Teflon sleds.  It can move forward & backward plus’s side to side.  I added a couple of pictures of the slides & the side bumpers…

Side bumper on left.

Bottom line, 490,000 barrels of crude oil running down the pipe a day.  Pretty cool.

Next, we boarded an open train, think of the ones at the zoo & road it to Dredge #8.  Along the way Dexter explained the history & overall process of getting gold out of the ground using a monstrous dredging machine. 

Old # 8

It scooped up tons of rocks, screened, sifted and processed the rocks looking for gold.  On an unusual side note, they would meltdown the gold they recovered into large ingots and get this, mail it to the mainland.  No armed guards just mailed it.

Anyway the train pulled around the bend and we were handed small bags of rock from the river & directed to panning stations along the dredge.  We all panned for gold under the direction of Dexter and a flock of helpful staff members.  After a little practice & lots of coaxing from staff members we all found small flakes of gold.  I put my findings in Mica’s pile, she got pretty good at panning.  She helped Rita finish her pan.  After we were all done, we took out findings to the assayers.  Mica & I had $24.  Rita had $18.  We pooled all the gold and Mica bought a bracelet with a glass vial and put all the gold flakes in it.

Saturday was a free day; those are days you can select from a number of optional tours the caravan recommends or find somewhere to go on your own or just chill out.

We chose a combination tour.  We flew out of Fairbanks in an eight passenger Navaho plain to Coldfoot, Alaska.  

Coldfoot is a small community of 24 people on the Dalton Highway.  It’s 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle & about the last gas station until you get to the oilfields near Prudhoe Bay 240 miles north.

We toured Coldfoot.  It didn’t take long.  We had a nice Truckers Lunch. Loaded up in a nine-passenger van, (slightly larger than the Navaho) and drove 60 miles south on the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle. On the way we learned about the Dalton Highway, ice road truckers and near crazy truck drivers that fly down the highway.

What is the Arctic Circle? It’s an imaginary line encircling the earth, this line is located at latitude 66* 33′ North. In the Arctic Circle, the sun does not set on summer solstice (June 20 or 21) and does not rise on winter solstice (December 21 or 22). Once we got there, we took the requisite photos, changed to a larger tour bus and headed to Fairbanks.  It was an interesting ride, think Alaskan highway, but not my Coach & I’m not driving!

We stopped at a spot where the tundra was accessible, and we walked out onto it.  The field was really spongy kind of weird to walk on, very unstable.  Our guide, Wes, dug a foot wide hole down just twelve inches and removed the super saturated soil.  He hit permafrost!  Everyone got an opportunity to touch it.  

It explains what all the trees are so stunted.  Their roots can only go down 12 inches.  It also explained why the roads were so bad, the 12 inches of everything, soil or roads are shifting on a bed of ice.

The long drive was broken up with some interesting documentaries, one about the building & crazy politics of the pipeline and the other about the national parks in Alaska.

So, this excursion started at 1pm in the afternoon and we got back to Fairbanks at 1:30 in the morning, a really, really long day.  Interestingly enough it was still daylight when we got home.

Today we loafed around the campground and the caravan went as a group to a salmon bake and good old fashioned corny musical about the founding of Fairbanks.  The highlight was the actors did a spectacular rendition of Abbot & Costello’ who’s on first but substituted a dog sled team.  It was hilarious, I had tears in my eyes.

Tomorrow we’re off to Denali National Park!