Week 16

Monday July 15, 2002

Another fantastic day in the Yukon. I slept in a little late this morning because I was planning to take a tour of the Yukon gold fields at 1:00. I went to the Gold City Tours office around Noon and bought my ticket. Had lunch before the tour left and boarded the old school bus at one. First we went to Guggieville, an old mining town, turned gas station and RV Park. They gave everyone a prospector’s pan full of dirt and taught us how to wash the dirt and pan for gold. Like everyone else in the tour, I found a few specs of gold at the bottom of my pan. To complete the experience, they took my specs of gold and placed them in a souvenir vial. The tour bus then continued up the banks of Bonanza creek where we saw the remnants of the gold fields and mining operations of a by-gone era. The land is scarred with miles of “tailings” which is the piles of rocks and soil left over after the dredging for gold. They have a huge dredging machine that has been salvaged and restored, and our tour stopped and went through this machine. It is 8 stories high and filled with rusted machinery which demonstrates the complexity of this mining operation. It was really very interesting. The tour continued through the fields and the guide explained all about how to file a claim and showed us a few examples of some claims currently being worked. In those cases, the prospectors are pretty protective of their property, and they make it very clear that they do not want the tour busses stopping by. Once the tour left Bonanza Creek area, it returned to the City of Dawson, which, incidentally once had a population of 35,000 people and around 1900 it was the largest city in North America west of Chicago and North of San Francisco. The guide explained the effects of the 24 hour daylight in the summer and the fact that the sun goes down in early December and doesn’t rise again until early January. He further pointed out that there were more birthdays in September than any other month. They recently built a beautiful school for the many children that live here. When the tour was done, I went back to the camper for a while, and then went to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Saloon. This also is high on the tourist list of things to do. This is the oldest casino in Canada. There were about 100 slot machines (modern) plus black jack, poker and roulette tables. They have 3 shows every night, so I dropped a few quarters in the slots, and caught the first show. It was pretty good and I had a great seat in the balcony. There was a very large woman who had a great voice. She was Diamond Tooth Gertie. She sand several songs and she was an excellent showman. She had four young girls who were dancers and did can-can, Charleston and tap dancing routines of yesteryear. After the show, I went back to the Gold City Tours for the second part of my city tour. This was a drive to the top of a mountain called midnight-dome. The bus climbed a rugged road to the top and parked for everyone to get out and look down on the city. It was unreal. Again this guide explained about living conditions up here. Although it was a beautiful day of 70s temperature, it was pretty chilly on the mountain top. He said that he has seen it as low as 72 degrees below zero, but “It’s a dry cold”. Frankly I’d rather be in Florida. When we left the mountain top, we went down some dirt roads and drove past several cemeteries. Each one, he stopped and explained what they were. One was a Chinese cemetery, another was Jewish, another was Catholic, another was for the Mounted police, etc. The tour eventually returned to town and the driver offered to take everyone back to their campground or to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s. I chose to return to the saloon for the midnight show. Changed another $20.00 bill for the slots and got anot

her drink called a Skookim Jim’s Spicy Caesar and watched the midnight show which promised to be better than the earlier one. It was a little better, but pretty much the same thing. I walked back to the RV park at 1:00 AM still broad daylight. Went straight to bed to get up and take the ferry out of town and I will be in Alaska tomorrow night.

Tuesday July 16, 2002

When I awoke this morning, the campground was nearly empty. It was full when I got home at 1:00 this morning. Everyone was down at the dock waiting for the small ferry that will take me across the Yukon River for the drive over the Top of the World Highway. I got in line at 9:15. This ferry is notorious for it’s long waits. It only holds 4 or 5 vehicles at a time and there were 3 RV Caravans leaving Dawson City this morning. I finally boarded the ferry around 12:45. It only took about 7 minutes to cross the Yukon river, and then I was on my way up, up and up to the Top of the World Highway. This was by far the most spectacular scenery that I have seen yet. I cannot comprehend that anything could be more beautiful than the scene from atop of these mountains. It was about 70 miles from Dawson City to the border between Canada and Alaska. The road was in better shape than I had read about. I almost did not take this route because of the stories that I read about the bad roads, but as it turned out, the section of the Alaska Highway that I missed by taking this route was worse than this one. I saw news reports on TV of people complaining about the road construction between Whitehorse and the border. The stories that I’ve heard make me glad I took this route. Crossing the border was a breeze. I expected the third degree, but a couple of questions and I was on my way. The road in Alaska was much, much worse than the Top of the World Highway in Yukon. It was about 30 miles of dirt road and it felt like a tractor had gone over it and left track marks in it. It was like driving on a washboard. Fortunately, traffic was very light and I saw very few vehicles coming or going. Finally I arrived at the first town. The town of Chicken, Alaska. This town is a joke. It has a gas station, a bar, a gift shop and an RV park. That is it. They brag about the fact that they have no TV, no telephone, no running water and no paved roads. It has a population of about 150. I spent the night at a “Bureau of Land Management campground about 8 miles South of Chicken. The last few miles were actually on paved roads.

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

I discovered this morning that I had a thick coat of dirt on everything inside and outside of the princess. This was going to be a short drive today. I drove down the Taylor Highway from just South of Chicken to Tok, Alaska. I am now back on the Alaska Highway, North of all the construction. The town of Tok is a small town that caters to RVers, so I checked in to the Tok RV Village just after Noon. I spent then entire afternoon and evening emptying out every drawer and cabinet and storage compartment and cleaning everything, including several loads of laundry. I never had time to wash the Princess, I will do that in the morning. I did break for a nice salmon dinner at a restaurant called Fast Eddy’s.

Thursday, July 18, 2002

This morning I logged onto the internet at the campground to send Charlie week 15. Then I drove the princess over to the do-it-yourself RV wash ($8.00) and washed the dust and dirt from the Top of the World and Taylor Highways. When I was done, the princess shined like new. Then I left the park and continued up the last 100 miles of the Alaska Highway to its end at mile 1422, Delta Junction, AK. From there I picked up the Richardson Highway toward Fairbanks. I made one stop at “North Pole”. then on into Fairbanks, where I checked in at the Rivers Edge Resort. Made reservations for a bus tour and a boat tour of Fairbanks tomorrow. Bus tour leaves at 8:30. I better get to bed.

Friday, July 19, 2002

Another fantastic day in Paradise. The company that operates the campground also operates the local tour company, so the bus picked me up at the campground this morning and I took the grand tour of Fairbanks. The bus driver was a young local boy named Mark. He was about 21 years old and was born and raised in Fairbanks. His grandfather came here in the very early days and made quite a name for himself. Mark was a student at the University of Hawaii and spends his winters in Hawaii and his summers in Fairbanks. Tough to take, huh? After the short tour around town, we went to the Alaska Pipeline just outside of town. Spent about 10 minutes there examining the lie at a point where it comes out of the ground and is suspended in the air. The pipeline is 800 miles long from Prudhoe Bay on the Artic Ocean to Valdez in Southeast Alaska. It moves about 1 million barrels of oil a day and it takes about 8 days for oil to travel the distance. I saw the machinery used to inspect the interior of the pipe and the elaborate security measures that they take to protect it. After the pipeline, we went to the Robert White Large Animal Research Station, part of the University of Alaska. This was a bit of a let down from other animal parks that I’ve seen. Very few animals to see and we only spent about 10 minutes there. After that we went to The Georgeson Botanical Gardens, which was pretty nice, but rather small compared to Butchart Gardens in Victoria. But I did get to see some of the huge vegetables that they grow up here because of the long days. Again we spent only about 10 miniutes at the gardens before boarding the bus and going to the University of Alaska Museum on the campus of the University. It was very very interesting. We spent close to an hour there and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They have a preserved body of a prehistoric Bison that is 30,000 years old. It was discovered frozen in the ice in 1984 and it is on display. This museum reminds me of the Smithsonian in Washington. That was the last stop on our tour. The bus drove back through downtown Fairbanks and Mark pointed out several familiar stores each of which is the Northern most, Sears, Radio Shack, Penny’s. He also pointed out a Macdonald’s that had an interesting story about it. A land owner nearby hung Ronald MacDonald in effigy to protest the building of the store. MacDonalds built a very high fence to block the view. The man raised the figure up to a height where it could be seen over the fence. So there is this MacDonald’s with a 30 foot fence behind it, and the neighboring property owner with Ronald MacDonald hanging about 40 feet up in the air. After that little tidbit, I returned to the Rivers Edge RV Park for lunch, then took an afternoon cruise on the S. S. Discovery. This is a large sternwheeler with four decks. It holds 900 passengers. It is billed as one of the top 10 attractions in North America. I was skeptical at first, but I saw the article that it was quoted from, a survey of travel agents all over North America and I saw the list of the top 10. I’ve been to 7 of them, and I have to agree with their list. The Discovery was no disappointment. It is a beautiful boat, and they had a narrator who explained what we were seeing from both sides of the boat as we cruised down the Chena River into the Tanana River. The Narrator was from Bethesda, MD. He graduated from B-CC high school, and went in the military. He was stationed in Fairbanks some 30 years ago, started a radio station here and eventually he was hired to narrate the boat tour. It was an extremely entertaining trip. In the beginning we passed by some beautiful log homes and their sea planes. At one point, a bush-pilot took off right beside the boat, went up in the air, circled the boat and came back and landed right back where he started from. A little further down the river, we passed a Reindeer farm and saw lots of Reindeer, then we passed an Athabascan Indian Village. We stopped by an Indian fish camp and watched as a Native American woman removed a huge salmon from a fish wheel and completely filleted the fish in less than a minute. We stopped at two different places to witness the raising of sled dogs and one was the home of Susan Butcher, four time winner one of the Iditerod dog-sled race. At the Indian Village that we stopped at, there were sled dogs who took some of the trainers on a fast race pulling the sleds through dirt instead of snow. At a later point, they demonstrated how well trained the dogs were, and the crowd had the opportunity to pet them as if they were ordinary house pets. This Riverboat Discovery tour was fantastic. If you are ever in Fairbanks, be sure to take this tour. After a long tiring day, I returned to the RV Park, had a late dinner and went to bed.

Saturday, July 20, 2002

This was a travel day. I left the RV park around 10:00, stopped at a place called Fred Meyer, which is kind of like a Wal-Mart. They sell everything. It is the first large store like this that I’ve seen in several weeks. I bought several things there, then headed out of town on the George Parks Highway to Denali National Park. It is about 100 miles South of Fairbanks. I called ahead to the Riverside RV Park, near the main entrance to the park and got a space for the next 3 days. I arranged to take an 8 hour bus tour of the park tomorrow. It leaves at 2:45 PM and will return around 11:00. No problem, it will still be broad daylight when I get back. I also had planned to go to a dinner theater here called the Alaska Cabin Night Dinner Theater. When I tried to get a ticket, it was sold out for tonight and tomorrow night, so I decided to stay one more night and go on Monday. I went to 3 different visitors centers today and learned much about the Denali Park and Mt. McKinley.

Sunday, July 21, 2002

The days just keep getting better. Today I had a tour of Denali National Park scheduled for 2:45 PM. It was the only tour available when I reserved. I left the campground around Noon and drove over to the McKinley Chalet where I picked up the binoculars that I had reserved for the trip, then to the Riley Mercantile just inside of the Park entrance. Private vehicles are only allowed just a short distance into the park. You can hike or bicycle, or dog sled in the winter, but the most common way of seeing Denali National Park is by tour bus. The bus was filled with 50 passengers, each with camera and binoculars. They were from every country in the world it seemed. The driver/guide was like a professor of botany, zoology and environmental science. He was quite a contrast from the kid that did the Fairbanks tour. The tour bus drove a total of 130 miles through the park, mostly on dirt roads. The tour included a box lunch, or dinner as in the case of the 2:45 tour. Denali National Park is more than 6 million acres, nearly 10,000 square miles. They make every effort to keep the park as natural as possible, hence no commercial facilities, no private cars, no paved roads. Mount McKinley is the centerpiece of the park. It is the highest mountain in North America at 20,320 feet. They say that only about 17% of the tourist that visit Denali Park get to see the top of Mount McKinley because it is usually blanketed in clouds. As with every place that I’ve been on this trip, I brought the sunshine with me. It was an absolutely perfect day. Not only did I get to see the top of the mountain, even if it was 50 miles away, but I also saw what our driver described as a grand slam: Grizzly Bear; Dall Sheep; Moose; Wolf and Caribou. Rarely do the tours get the chance to see all five of these animals as well as a clear view of Mount McKinley. The tour lasted until 9:45 PM and I was pretty tired by the time I got back to Riley Mercantile. I drove the princess back to the campground and crashed without any dinner. The famous naturalist John Muir wrote in 1879, “ No words can convey anything like an adequate conception of its sublime grandeur, noble simplicity and fineness of the sculpture of the walls. Still more impotent are words in telling the peculiar awe one experiences in entering these mansions of the icy North.”