The Chena River Cruise in Fairbanks

The Discovery III paddle wheeler.

Trail Breaker Kennels...

And Susan Butcher the musher champ.

Two of the homes along the river.

Caribou, moose and bear skins in the native village.

The beautiful ceremonial winter coat.

The little embankment I fell backwards off and just missed the river! In the background is the fishing wheel.

The wildnerness area of the river.

A section of the Alaska pipeline.

One of the massive dredging machines.

A panning demonstration.

Panning... I got a few flecks...

Disembarking for lunch.

Andrew and Anita

Saturday, August 19^th.

Fairbanks was originally a mining town and now is largely military as there is both an army and air force base here. One in 80 Alaskan residents are licenced pilots, more than anywhere else in the world. This is because of the remoteness of the lands and the lack of roads and miserable driving conditions in the winter. This morning we had an excellent river cruise on the Chena River. Jim Binkley started a steamboat business for transporting people and goods up and down the river. Today, five generations later it is largely a well-oiled tourist business that is very good at mining the money of tourists. The Discovery III riverboat paddle-wheeler has only a 40” draught and can therefore navigate this shallow river.  For the first time on this trip (other than boarding the cruise ship) I felt like I was being herded around with too many people. However, it turned out to be an excellent day. The boat had four decks and I chose to be on the top deck which was far less crowded and offered more opportunity for walking around and viewing. Along the river we saw many cabins and small homes as well as many new builds of large luxury homes. But the two main attractions were the Trail Breaker Kennels and the Chena River indigenous village. Susan Butcher is a local hero. She was the first woman to win the 1000-mile-long Iditarod, the premier dog race through Alaska and did so four times in five years from 1986 to 1990 with her favourite lead dog, Granite. Sadly, she died of leukemia in 2006 at aged 52. Her legacy is on the bank of the river in the form of Trail Breaker Kennels  now run by her daughter. She talked to us from the shore via a microphone hookup and explained some things about sledding and then gave us a demo of the dogs pulling an ATV around a course. The second spot was the Chena native village. Everyone got off the boat and we were divided into three groups and taken to a seating area to learn about the culture. There were three informative sessions: 1) about fishing for salmon, 2) living conditions and traditions and 3) hunting and clothing making. The village is a reconstruction of a nearby village and serves as a museum for tourists to learn about native life pre-contact. The natives caught fish using something similar to a water wheel. As it turned it scooped up salmon in baskets, where they were killed, fileted, dried, and then smoked. The natives lived in different types of homes, some were temporary shelters used by nomadic tribes and others were log cabins built using the plentiful spruce trees. The natives hunted bears, caribou, wolves, fox, muskrat, beaver, and ermine for their furs which they used for clothing and bedding. They didn’t value mink until they found out how much the first Russian explorers valued it. Then they used it for trade to get the colourful beads they used in their clothing. They hunted caribou like the plain’s tribe hunted buffalo, and they used all of the animal for food, and used the bones for tools. One woman wore a beautiful ceremonial winter coat made from several different species of animals. She explained that wolverine fur has some oils in it that if worn around the hood prevents frostbite. I tried to get ahead of the crowds so that I could get photos without people in them. At the fish camp I was photographing the smoke house but couldn’t get the whole building in the frame, so I backed up and promptly fell off a three-foot embankment onto the muddy sand below. I miss the river by about a foot. I scrambled out embarrassed but unhurt and very thankful that only about four people witnessed it. Luckily, I was not using my camera at that point and the phone wound up on the bank. Stupid tourist! When we were finished, we boarded the boat again for the return trip and sailed by the home of Captain Jim Binkley’s 96-year-old widow who stood on the lawn and waved to us and her grandson who was the captain of the boat. We offloaded at the start point where we were Shepard’d into the dining hall where we enjoyed a provided lunch. Our bus then took us to the Goldstream Dredge mining area. Our first stop was at a section of the Alaska Oil Pipeline. The actual pipeline here is above ground and our guide explained some of the intricacies of construction of the 800-mile line from the Beaufort Sea on the Arctic Ocean to its terminus at Valdez on the Pacific coast. Then we boarded a small train for a tour of the mining area. Here in Fairbanks the gold was not easily panned by miners and most of the stampeders who came here went broke. Mining here required companies and lots of heavy equipment. We saw one of the large dredgers that dug up the rock. We had a panning demonstration and then we went into a frontier mining ‘town’ and had a chance to try it. Everyone found a few flecks of gold in the bottom of their pan. There was another large souvenir shop here and you could have your flecks encased in a small pendent or necklace. While walking around I saw a man taking a picture of his wheelchair bound mother. I asked if they wanted a picture together and I got talking to them. Andrew and Anita are from Manchester England and he and his sister have brought her to Alaska as it was a dream of hers. I had a nice talk with them. Anita is reliant on oxygen, which got me wondering about the expense of insurance and the hassles of transporting the oxygen canisters which are flammable. Inspirational family. Back to the hotel where I signed up for a dinner show at the local pioneer village. Dinner was a delicious salmon bake, and the show was a reenactment of the history of this frontier mining town. There were only four actors, two male and one female and when they had a chorus line of three cancan girls, one of them was a very bearded miner. At one point they did a revised version of the Abbot and Costello classic, Who’s on First? Very funny. It was a thoroughly enjoyable last day in Alaska.