Smoke On The Water

Fairbanks

We’ve enjoyed Fairbanks, but I have to confess that the two reasons we are still in town are that (A. Forest fires have blocked both routes south (leaving open only the Dalton Highway which goes north to the Artic Ocean) and (B. We are really tired of traveling.  So we’ve enjoyed a week off, and got to see more of the “Alaskan Interior,” than most tourists.

Thursday we visited Fairbanks Pioneer Park, where they have a collection of museums and shops.  But they were repaving the place and most shops were closed.  

We also checked out the airport where more planes have floats than wheels.  Which is ok, since the middle runway is paved with water.

Chena River and Hot Springs

Friday we drove out 60 miles along the Chena River (pronounced Chee-nah) to Chena Hot Springs.  The hot springs has some interesting features, including a building that is kept below freezing temperatures to house a collection of ice sculptures and a very chilly bar.  The bar offers martinis served in glasses made from ice.  You are encouraged to take them home with you, but they melt in about 30 minutes. The Hot Springs itself has a nice outdoor pond with 100-degree water and lots of mosquitoes. We decided very hot water didn’t sound as good on a 90-degree day as it might have during winter.

We had lunch in their main lodge, and then ran into a bull moose eating a TREE between the buildings of the lodge. Heading back towards Fairbanks along the river we also saw two other moose and a pair of meese (baby moose) in a slough by the road.

We found some interesting gravel bars along the stream that seemed perfect for fishing (no  trees behind you to grab your backcast), but the swarms of mosquitoes didn’t make fishing sound like such a good idea.  We finally found a nice site where the mosquitoes were not quite so bad, so I got out my fly rod and tried fishing for the famous Artic Graylings that inhabit this stream.

Using barbless-hook flies I had tied myself, I managed a number or bites and one good hook-up. But I never managed to bring a fish to shore.  I think they were spitting the fly out.  But trying to set the hook quickly didn’t work either. I need some lessons. 

Finally, about seven RVs showed up and asked us to move the Jeep so they could line  the entire gravel bar along the river.  Then they disgorged a flock of kids who began a contest to see who could throw the most rocks into the water.  The fish moved out even quicker we did.

Riverboat Discovery III

Saturday we took the Discovery Riverboat for a smoky trip down the Chena River to the Tanana.  Does that name sound familiar?  Tanana? If you are a music fan and love Paul Simon’s Graceland album there is a line that goes, “Tanana, Tanana, She has diamonds on the soles of her shoes.”  Probably not the same Tanana, but the song runs through my mind ever time I see the name on signs.

The boat leaves at 2:00 pm but we were told to be there an hour early.  That must be because they have the world’s biggest gift shop and you need at least an hour to see it.  Or two. This photo shows a small part of it.

We bought about 10 shirts.  No kidding.  They had nice shirts and hats at reasonable prices.  And I got a photo made with Lance Mackey, who won the famous Iditarod dogsled races in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. That’s an 1100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome.  Dogsledding is sort of like ATVing, but it runs on fish instead of gas.  And they do it in winter when it is really cold.  Lance also won the Yukon Quest 1000-mile race four consecutive years.  That is a lot of mushing.  His dogs helped a lot.  I met one of them.  Amp was there to join in the photos and bark at anyone who walked by with an ice cream cone. No kidding.  This dog alerts on ice cream! The border patrol needs Amp’s help to stop ice cream smuggling across the border in southern Arizona. That's me, Lance and Amp below. He's the one in the fur coat.

There was an actual boat trip, too.  Discovery 3 is a big paddle wheeler, captained by the great-grandson of one of the first riverboat captains in Alaska.  It’s still a family business.

As we started off down the smoke-filled river—the same one I’d fished the day before—they had a 1951 Piper Super Cub on floats do a takeoff from the river just ahead and circle the boat before landing.  He made it look easy.  It isn’t. And the smoke made it even harder.

Then we pulled up alongside a dog training facility where they had hooked up a team of dogs to an ATV (I told you earlier it was like ATVing). They had this quad tied down to start with, and the dogs were going crazy trying to pull it (below left).  When they finally cut the ATV loose, the dogs took off like a dragster.  I didn’t know an ATV could go that fast.  Especially with the engine off.

We continued all the way downriver to where the clear Chena meets the muddy Tanana.  This riverboat doesn’t go further because the ever-changing Tanana is too muddy to see sandbars or other underwater obstacles.  Heading back upstream we stopped at a replica of an Athabascan village.  There we trooped ashore to learn about the Indian culture. 

It seems there are two separate periods, before Europeans, and after the tribes met Europeans. At that point, we were told, they went from living in skin huts and following herds of caribou, to building log cabins and raising domestic caribou--called reindeer. But lots of their original culture has continued.  We saw beautiful coats and other clothing made in villages north of here.  The young ladies doing the demos are students who left their home villages to attend the university here (below right).

On the way back the “commentator” on the boat PA system pointed out a home along the riverbank that he said represented the ultimate measure of success for interior Alaskans.  The house wasn’t as opulent as some we’d already passed. But in these parts, he said, success is measured by the number and quality of your toys.  He pointed out the nice log home had two trucks plus a dock with a Cessna on floats, a speedboat, Zodiac, several smaller boats.  Ah.  My kind of people.  I hope the owner had a nice gun collection inside.

Then we cruised on back to the dock.  Total distance, maybe two miles each way.  But it was a lot of fun for a touristy thing. 

Fires permitting, we will head south Monday to Denali National Park and Mt. McKinley. We have friends there already and they report the smoke won't let you see the mountain.  That reminds us of last summer in the Tetons.

Stay tuned.

John and Marsha

PS: In the last blog edition I said the Fireweed was the state flower.  I apologize to the entire state of Alaska.  It turns out that the Forget-Me-Not is the state flower. I forgot it.

(all photos copyright 2013 John B. Taylor)

Fairbanks: Daylight All Day, Every Day

Shade Was at a Premium at the Midnight Sun Festival

We made sure we got to Fairbanks in time to do their Midnight Sun Festival in the old downtown.  It was downtown and down home.  Lots of food and entertainment that ranged from a continuous demonstration of skateboarding and trick bike riding, to a bunch of men rap dancing, to the 9th U.S Army Band.  Variety, in other words.  Gary "Alaska" Sloan performed with his sons doing, you guessed it, Louisiana cajun music.  The audience was sitting over along on the sidewalk where they had moved almost all the folding chairs to get out of the hot sun.  But long guitar and bass rifts brought people from the sidelines to dance in front of the band.

You can see there was one member of the audience that didn't get the concept of watching the band.  The dog above had his eyes glued to this lady's sandwich, which eventually he did grab.  She didn't seem to notice, so they shared.

Downtown is right on the Chena River, so folks were able to cool off in the water.

And the boy above had fun with his bubble machine.

After we had about all the culture we could stand, we discovered that even though the sun seemed to be telling us it was about 4:00 pm, it was actually 10:30 at night.  The only eatery open was Denny's.  There, Marsha and I got fed about 45 minutes apart, so there may be some customs here we don't yet understand.  Notice the time shown on the bank sign next door, and the sky color.  Did I mention it that sunset and sunrise here come at about the same time? We just don't know when.

Museum of the North  

One of the "must see" things here is the Museum of the North, located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus.

They have an art gallery with a special room just for listening.  It has random monotonous sounds coming from nowhere and a wall of random colors that don't change.  Hmmmm. We listened for a while.  Hmmmm.  Not the Tonight Show. 

They also had a piece of art that isn't complete until you sit in it.  So I sat.  I didn't hear anything there either.

Most of the museum deals with Alaskan History, but that area is so dimly lighted that photos are not successful.  Sorry.  In one exhibit we learned that the ancestors of today's Native Alaskans arrived from Asia across an ice bridge.  I arrived by motor home, so I wonder if that makes me a native? By the way, the natives in this part of Alaska speak the same language as our Navajos and Apaches.  Ya' te Hey.  Then after the natives arrived, Alaska had a long Russian period, then the gold rush period and then World War II.  All very interesting.  But the dim lighting and fridgid air conditioning did get their point across.  There are long stretches of the year where Alaska is dimly lighted, if at all, and really cold.  We were so happy to get outside into the 95-degree heat.  Fairbanks is hotter today than parts of Arizona.  Go figure.

Outside the museum they had planted the Alaska state flowers, called "Fireweed."  Since Dawson, people had been pointing to plants and calling them Fireweed.  Turns out the real Fireweed is just now coming out and starting to bloom.  Very pretty.  See below right.

We also drove 10 miles east to the North Pole.  Not the actual pole, but North Pole, Alaska.  Santa seems to be in charge of the place anyway.  They get all the mail addressed to Santa each year and answer it, we hear.

So right now we are sitting at Barnes and Noble, the bookstore, using their wifi. Today they are having clam chowder or black bean soup in their Starbucks.   I think I'll quit and have lunch.  This is a handy place.  Tomorrow we plan to drive 60 miles out to Chena Hot Springs, a resort where they have a bar in an ice cave, and serve martinis in glasses carved out of ice.  Marsha can get a sarsaparilla.  On the way back I plan to do some fishing.  Our friend Gary Turner tells us the Chena is the place to fish for grayling, a trout-like fish abundant on the small river.  Finally I get to start fishing!  Then, on Saturday we are taking the paddle wheeler riverboat Discovery down the Chena to the Tanana River. So I plan to post some pix of those adventures here before we head to Denali National Park on Monday.

Stay tuned!

Top O' The World To Ya'

There are two ways to drive to Alaska from Dawson in the Yukon.  The one that doesn't involve going all the way back to Whitehorse is called the Top Of The World Highway.  It starts with a ferry ride across the Yukon River from Dawson to...well, nowhere.  We were not the only people in Dawson who thought of taking the short cut.

Everyone lined up on the outskirts of the city and waited patiently.  More or less.  Our wait was an hour and a half. There was no dock, just some dirt piled up on both shores.  The current was very strong.  The ferry would back off the sand then get swept downstream.  Then it fought its way back upstream until it sort of collided with the sand.  The captain then turned it and poured on the power to hold it in position while we drove off.  In a 22,000 pound motor home.  They don't do this all the time.  In the winter you drive across on the river, which was solid ice until about two weeks before our crossing.

We had met a couple from New Mexico at the campground.  Jack and Gayle were driving a big truck with even larger Montana fifth wheel trailer (photo at left).  When the young girl directing traffic onto the ferry motioned us aboard, then added Jack and Gayle, we thought the whole boat would have to sink.  





But they added three cars to the load and shoved off across the river.  The shot below shows the infrastructure at the start and finish.  The river sweeps it away all the time, but they just dump more dirt and go on.

So we rolled off with a huge sigh of relief.  I think Gayle was still holding her breath in the truck next to us.  She had asked earlier how deep I thought the river was. I told her it didn't matter...

The Top Of The World Highway runs across a series of high ridges about 4000 ft above sea level.  Not high by our standards, but the valleys on both sides were at sea level.
So we were enjoying a dirt road that drops off on both sides.  And sharing with with big trucks.

We had seen snow along the roadside in Dawson, so it came as no surprise when we encountered it up on the Top O' The World.

After 67 miles and perhaps two hours we saw this odd sight. It was a border crossing sitting way up high in the middle of nowhere.  On the international boundary.  It wasn't like the border station in Tubac.  No dogs.  As we screeched up the U.S. side (with a rock stuck in a brake caliper) the DHS guy asked where we were coming from.  I assumed he knew we'd been in Dawson, the only place you could possibly be coming from on this road, so I said, "Arizona."  That seemed to work as a password, and we sailed on down the steep hills, back in the U.S.A.

 After another two hours of slow driving on even worse roads, we arrived in an old mining camp.  This is the first community on the U.S. side. The miners noted the abundance of ptarmigans in the area and were going to name it after the prairie chicken.  But couldn't agree on how to spell "ptarmigan."  I suppose 100 years ago their laptops didn't have spell checkers (whew).  So they punted and named the town Chicken.


A week earlier they had a rock festival there that they must have seen as a smaller version of Woodstock.  They naturally called it ChickenStock.

We stopped for a late lunch at the Chicken Creek Cafe.  The Jeep looked like it had just survived WWII.  Dirt everywhere. Inside and out.

By 5:00 pm we had come out at the Alcan Highway again after experiencing the worst roads on the whole trip, which were south of Chicken.  After a night in the metropolis of Tok, we continued on to Delta Junction, which had been the other starting point for the Alaska Highway construction during WWII. The Jeep felt right at home.

In Junction we found a visitor center that featured huge mosquito sculptures (which we would find out later were life sized...

...and a monument marking the end (or beginning) of the Alcan.


We headed northwest towards Fairbanks.  I would say we headed northwest into the setting sun, but by now we have figured out it never sets.


Yesterday was the longest day of the year.  We'll tell you about last night's (sunny) Midnight Sun Festival in another issue in a day or so.


Oh, I almost forgot:  I wanted to show you the matching wedding rings Marsha and I got in Dawson.  They call them "slucebox" rings because they are said to resemble a slucebox filled with gold nuggets.  Our are filled with 22 carat nuggets found in streams around Dawson.  Real Klondike Gold.

John and Marsha