The tour director kept up a patter the whole way to Fairbanks. I read my book and tried not to listen as much as I'm very weary of the constant talking on these long rides. They did show a video on the Aurora Borealis which was quite interesting about what makes the aurora and how the aurora happens in the north and south simultaneously (Aurora Australis in the south). Fairbanks is situated at the perfect latitude for seeing the Aurora. Both further north and further south don't have as good a shows. Of course, it doesn't show much in the summer because it's light 22 hours a day. We'd really like to come back when we could see it.
We also learned that the Alaskan Mountain Range, of which Denali is a part, forms a barrier to the moist air from the south, so that north of there is an arctic desert. Fairbanks is typically very warm in the summer (we were hot!), and 40-60 degrees below zero in the winter.
In Fairbanks, they took us to see the Alaska Pipeline. We got about 5 minutes to look at it.It was mildly interesting, but I got the best warning sign of the trip for my collection.
We were dropped off downtown for lunch. We ate at a sandwich shop and then walked in a park along the Cheena River. The park is quite lovely with a pedestrian bridge where we sat and watched the water for a while.
For the afternoon, we went on a riverboat cruise down the Cheena River to where it merges with the Tanana River. The boat was huge (see photo) and crammed with people so much so that it was difficult to see the things they were pointing out. Loading and unloading (at the beginning and at the stop in the middle) was a cattle call. (Am I beginning to sound jaded by the tour experience?) In spite of that, we did enjoy the cruise. The boat we were on was designed to be similar the boats that carried freight and passengers in the early days of Alaska when there were no roads. They showed us the original tour boat which was smaller, but was a rehabilitated working boat.
They had a bush plane demo where they first had the plane take off from a very short primitive runway along the banks of the river. Then it landed in the water and took off alongside the boat to show what a short take-off space it needed (see photo). I can't remember the the type of plane it was, but they said it hasn't been manufactured in a long time and that the people that use them in AK have to maintain them rather than buy new ones because they work so well for the conditions they need them for. The one they were demoing was built in the 1950s.
Then we went by the Trailbreaker Kennels which is right on the side of the river (see photo). They stopped the boat while they did a demo of how they train sled dogs. The kennels were started by Susan Butcher, who was the first woman to win the Iditarod dog sledding race, and her husband. She died a few years ago, but her husband stood on the banks with a microphone and told us how they train the dogs. I'll try to upload a short video of those dogs running when I get on my bigger computer.
Then we went on to the place where the Cheena runs into the Tanana River. The Tanana is one of the big glacially fed rivers that have multiple channels in a large flat river bed. We didn't go on the Tanana, but they talked about the difficulty of navigating those rivers when the channels may change daily. It was also interesting to see where the rivers came together. The Cheena is a large, clear running river, and the Tanana, being glacially fed is full of glacial flour (finely pulverized rock from the glacier). You could see where the murky and clear water swirled together where they met.
On the way back up the river we stopped at a the Cheena Native Alaskan village (see photos). This village is a mock up to teach about how Athabaskan Alaskan Native Alaskans lived a century ago. The tour was narrated by young Alaskan Native college students. They told us about the clothing, housing, and hunting practices of early Athabaskans. It was the first time on the trip we'd heard from actual Alaskan Natives, although our tour guide talked some in a way that made me very uncomfortable. So I was glad to hear from these young people. Still, they only talked about the past on this tour and not much about the present.
Finally, we went by the (palatial) home of the wife of the man who founded the riverboat tour. She was in the yard waving to the boat (he died a while back). Five generations of the family have worked on the boat. There were two kids, about 5 and 7 years old, that were dressed in uniforms and got to steer the boat we were on a while (their father was standing next to them). They are the great grandchildren of the founder.
Ashore, we got on our tour bus one last time to go to our last hotel. This hotel was a resort and ended up being a one-bedroom apartment. That seemed odd for one night, but it was nice having a comfortable sofa to do our reading/blogging on. I got up several times in the night and looked out, hoping it would be dark and I could see the northern lights. But of course, it never really got dark (we're 200 miles from the arctic circle here). At 2:00am, it was still twilight. I guess we have to come back.
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