Fairbanks, AK Day 2

I'm sure all 2 people who might be following this blog are at least slightly curious about how we did at the gold mine yesterday, but not so fast. I'll give you a hint and tell you that our total involves the sixth digit! We started the day on a sternwheeler riverboat tour that took us past a dog sled kennel, where we got a brief lesson on how the dogs are trained for the iditorod race. We also stopped and got off the ship for about an hour at a recreated series of Athabascan villages. One was set before the Eurpoean influence, one was set after, and one was a little more recent. Fun fact: reindeer and caribou are genetically identical. The only difference is that reindeer have been domesticated.

We had a very long day of geology, natural history, archeology, and just plain fun.

We ended our bus tour at Gold Dredge #8, where we saw the true meaning of "work." After that we went over to the El Dorado Gold Mine and tried our hand at panning for gold, also much work. We sat on the bench and worked steadily at sloshing out the rocks and sand as we bent over a large trough of water. It sure is hard on the knees and lower back!! After about 30 minutes-that-seemed-like-30-hours, we finally had some help finishing up sloshing the pans. (For those that have never done this before, you have a very strong urge to be VERY careful because you don't want to slosh out your gold!) We took our little flakes out of the pan and took them into the store to be weighed. I thought I might actually make some money because mine flakes had weight to them and they rattled in the canister. I heard people ahead of us getting totals of $40-$60 worth. Eventually, we ended up getting mine weighed, and the total was....

$6 for 2 grams of gold. Stan wasn't so lucky, as his little flakes didn't even register on the scale. Then, true to the American dream, we spent $40 to buy a locket-type necklace to show off the $6 worth of flakes!

We ended the day at the Museum of the North, which is on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. It was very interesting and we took several pictures, and completed our knowledge of the Alaskan interior, but to our bodies it was 12 am Central when we left the museum, so we were exhausted.

Today, we are taking the dome-car train down to Denali National Park. There should be lots of wild animal viewing...

Fairbanks, AK Day 1

We arrived in Fairbanks at 8 PM Central time (5 PM local time). We decided to try out some local cuisine at the Thai House. It was really good! Afterward, we decided to head over to a local ice cream shop we heard about (Hot Licks), but we had to take the bus. On the way, one of the stops was at the local Wal-Mart. I believe we witnessed something slightly unusual...
As we pulled up to the bus stop, I looked over and saw a military truck complete with the canvas roll-up roof. There were several soldiers that were loaded metal folding chairs into the back that they had just purchased at Wal-Mart! We thought it was a little unusual just to see the vehicle. We are now sitting in the hotel lobby making use of the wireless and it is 11:30 PM Central time and broad daylight. They say the official sunset is 12:30ish and sunup is abou 3:30, but the hours in between are more like twilight, not dark.

Check back tomorrow to see if we strike it rich on our Gold Dredge Tour!