FAIRBANKS,  AK
Saturday, July 9, 2011

We boarded a bus early this morning to go to the premier attraction in Fairbanks.  At 8:45 we took a cruise on the "Riverboat Discovery", an authentic stern wheeler that is powered by a paddle wheel.  We sat on the top deck as it was a beautiful sunny day.  A bush pilot took off and landed next to our boat to demonstrate the challenges of pontoon planes.  We cruised up the Chena River to the "wedding of the rivers" where you can see the confluence of the Tanana River and Chena River and see the difference in water quality from the clear water of the Chena vs. the silty glacial fed Tanana.  Along the way we saw Susan Butcher's iditarod champion sled dogs in action demonstrated
by her husband Dave Monson.  We were given a guided walking tour of a typical Athabascan Indian village and demonstrations and explanations of native Alaskan cultural traditions.

We had a buffet lunch at the Pumphouse Restaurant, another historic site, before the bus whisked us off to see the Alyeskin Corporation's viewing point of the Alaskan pipeline.

We had another opportunity to pan for gold at the El Dorado Gold Mine.  Much of the mining in the Arctic consisted of underground tunnels, called drift mines, that followed the veins of gold in the gravel. Rock formations created natural collections areas for the gold and an experienced placer (pronounced plasser) miner knew that gold settled to low areas.

After a short ride on a narrow gauge train ride through a created perma frost tunnel and being serenaded by Earl Hughes, the former steel guitarist for the Don Ho Show in Hawaii, we were given a demonstration on the proper techniques of panning alongside a long sluice box.  We were handed a poke (a bag of dirt) guaranteed to produce gold and led to an area where we could pan that dirt for our own gold.  You have to swish that dirt around in your pan, getting out the larger rocks, rinsing, dipping, swirling, dipping, swirling and hoping the  gold flakes in your "mineral bowl" settles to the bottom of the pan, under the sand and rocks.  I found 5 grams of gold in my pan (with an assist from a gold miner who was a junior in the local high school) and LeRoy found 2 grams of gold
in his mineral bowl.  We took our cache to be weighed by the assayer on site.  Of course I had all those gold flakes put into a 14k locket that was available for purchase in the gift store, of course!  I don't think the store would buy that gold back anyway.

We enjoyed pizza at Geraldo's recalling the events of the day and called it a night.