Fairbanks to Denali

Tuesday and Wednesday, June 29-30.  Today is our final day in Fairbanks so we went for a drive out the Steese Highway.  I did laundry first thing this morning, but it started drizzling rain about 10:00 a.m. and did that the rest of the day.  On our drive, we stopped at an old gold camp and had lunch and pie, then stopped at a little pond where a beaver was swimming around.

We stopped at a couple rivers looking for possible gold panning sites, but the mosquitoes were so bad it was hard to stay out of the car.

We see a lot of moose antlers decorating buildings out here.  I keep looking for a rack on the ground but haven't come across any yet.  We did see some caribou antlers on our way back from Prudhoe Bay but they were in the very wet tundra so we couldn't retrieve them.

The other thing we keep an eye out for are animal carcasses because we know Brenda collects them.  Joe thinks this is a bear skeleton.  I tried to talk him into bringing it home with us, but he didn't think so.  And when I tried to lift it up, it still had meat on it -- I think it was pretty fresh.

We drove about 50 miles out this highway, then turned around.  The beaver was the only wildlife we found.  We did stop to pan for a little bit, the rain was just a sprinkle at this time.  Mazie thought she found a couple flakes of gold, but she lost them before we could come up with something to put them in.  I did not find anything.

Gold panning is a lot like fishing -- a lot of effort, always thinking you are going to have some success, but often going home empty-handed.

We often play cards at night.  We play 4-handed euchre with Collins and Marilyn, or 6-handed pitch with the whole group.  Pitch is David's game, and he sometimes adds a few strange rules during the course of the game, if it appears that his team might not win.  Tonight's game had a little different twist.  Marilyn brought over a "new" deck of cards, and on the very first hand, two jack of hearts showed up.  David had the second one, and could not figure out how the first jack had already been played.  It was quite confusing - and had him confused the rest of the night, although he still managed to win.  We know not to trust him, but now we are afraid he has corrupted Marilyn, since she brought over the cards.  She admitted that they had used these cards last spring in a game that required 3 decks, but we don't know if we believe that excuse.

Wednesday morning we headed out of Fairbanks to Denali.  We crossed the Tanana River at Nenana, the town that has the tripod contest every year on when the ice on the Tanana River will break up. The tripod is planted two feet into the Tanana River ice between the highway bridge and the railroad bridge.  It is 300 feet from shore and connected to a clock that stops as the ice goes out.   Joe, Mazie and all bought chances for next year's contest.  This is as far as barges can come up from the Yukon on the Tanana River.  From here, goods are loaded onto trucks or trains for delivery to the Interior of Alaska.  

This is the part of the framework that sits on the ground.  The second photo has an image of the kind of tripod they use to put out in the river.  This year's pot was $279,030.  Chances cost $2.50 each.

Nenana also has an old Episcopal Church which was built in 1905.  It has hand-hewn pews and a raised altar decorated with Native beaded moosehide frontal and dossal hangings.

We got to our campground about 4:00 p.m., 8 miles north of Denali National Park.  We drove into the park to make reservations for a bus tour tomorrow, then drove the 15 miles allowed to public driving.  We found a moose at the beginning of this drive, saw a caribou at the turn-around, and then came upon a moose and calf just before we got all the way back.  We are hoping to see a lot more animals tomorrow, including some bears.

We had dinner right outside the park, delicious halibut again.  If you have never had fresh Alaskan halibut in Alaska, you don't know what you're missing!   Joe and I are both fighting colds, we we hope to be up to our 8-hour bus ride through the park tomorrow.