Tom and Carole arrived in Fairbanks today.  Their trip was good.  The dogs did well, too.

June 25, 2008

Jack, Jeannie, Tom, Carole, Richard and I went to the Pioneer Park in Fairbanks.  It is a tourist attraction build in 1967 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the purchase of Alaska from Russia.  It was originally called Pioneer Park, but later was changed to Alaskaland.  In 2001, since a lot of tourist were expecting an attraction along the lines of Disneyland, the name was once again changed to Pioneer Park.

Whatever it is called, it is an enjoyable park for the young and the not so young.  There is a beautiful,  antique carousel, a couple of museums including one about aviation, a sternwheeler, a village of buildings from Fairbanks’ beginning in the early 1900’s, and one about the Alaska Railway.  On display is a railcar in which Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, rode through Alaska to drive the golden spike at the completion of the Alaskan Railway.

I really enjoyed going through the village made up of log cabins and other buildings moved from various places in Fairbanks.  Most were constructed in the early 1900’s and have a history associated with the gold rush which took place in the Interior of Alaska in 1902.  The original pioneer log cabins tell the story of those who made their fortune post stampede.  Each building has the date it was constucted, where it was moved from, who lived there, and what part they played in the beginning days of Fairbanks.  

During the evening, they offer a Salmon Bake which is a huge outdoor, all-you-can-eat buffet with salmon, cod, halibut, salads, dessert.  We ate there, but first we went for a ride on a sternwheeler.  Run by third and fourth generations of the Binkley famiy, it is a 3.5 hour tour down the Chena River.  The banks are close on both sides and people who live along the river are part of the tour.  There is a bush pilot who takes off on a float plane, lands again on the water, and then pulls up beside the paddleboat and tells us a little about himself and the plane. 

Susan Butcher’s homestead is also along the shore.  She rose to fame as the second woman to win the famed Iditarod Trail Sled Race.  She went on to win 3 more times.  When I was in Fairbanks a few years ago, Susan came out to the bank and talked to us through a headset about her dogs and her experience as a musher.  She then hooked up a team to an ATV and we watched the dogs run pulling her along. 

This time, her husband did the demonstration.  42-year old Susan Butcher died August 5, 2006 from cancer.  I was so impressed with Susan and her accomplishments, I was heartbroken to learn about her passing. 

The river flowed into the Tanana (pronounced tan-an-all) River.  There the boat stopped at an Athabascan Indian Village.  We  learned about the lives of the Alaskan Indians and some of the traditions of the different tribes. (Aleut, Alutiiq Eskimos, etc).  A lady named Dixie Alexander makes clothing out of skins and beading and has one on display at the Smithsonian in Washington.  One of the guides modeled a parka with a sunburst hood.  The picture is a little blurry because the woman behind me also wanted an picture and couldn’t wait until I got mine, but no matter, you can at least get the idea.

This was a great day.  I had a wonderful time.  Interesting activities, beautiful scenery, and great friends.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

Until later, Dolores and Richard 

Between Tok and Fairbanks, in the area of Big Delta stands an old roadhouse.  It was build by John Hajdukovich in 1910.  A Swedish immigrant named Rika Wallen came to work at the roadhouse.  John Hajdukovich went away in 1917 leaving Rika in charge.  She grew vegetables and farm animals for food to serve to travelers on their way to and from Fairbanks. 

Hajdukovick returned in 1923 and sold the roadhouse to Rika.  She continued to work it until the late 40’s.  She lived there until she died in 1969.  Today, the large, two-story house is a gift shop downstairs with antiques upstairs set up like rooms in the roadhouse. 

We ate lunch there and then walked along the Tanana River.  We got a good look at one section of the Alaskan Highway.

Until later, Dolores and Richard

1.)  Rika’s Roadhouse

2.)  Alaskan Pipeline

3.)  Barn with grass growing on roof

4.)  Antiques upstairs at Rika’s

P.S.  To those of you who wondered if I swam the Yukon River to be on the other side when Richard and our bus came over on the ferry–I’d be more likely to walk on water than to swim the Yukon.  LOL  With the Jeep hooked up to the bus, it wouldn’t fit on the ferry.  Jeannie and I came across with our Jeep and Richard came next and then Jack with his motor home and van.  He could leave his hooked up because their motor home is just a couple of feet shorter than ours.  Mystery solved. )

Today we crossed the Yukon River on a ferry and then began the climb to the Top of the World Highway.  This is a two-lane road (barely two in some places) mostly made up of earth and gravel.  There are very few guardrails lining the road which, in many places, drops hundreds of feet (in some places thousands of feet) straight down.  It was a 187-mile ride over 7 1/2 hours.  We cleared the border from Canada to Alaska with no trouble. 

The views (those I dared look at without becoming dizzy) were spectacular!!!  A whimsical stop along the highway is Chicken, Alaska.  Downtown Chicken is made up of three businesses-a merchantile, a saloon, and a cafe.  If nature should call, there is a compound of outhouses nearby.  The sign over the outhouses reads “Chicken Poop.”

In the late 1800’s, gold was discovered in the area and by 1902 the miners were ready to incorporate the town (the second to do so in Alaska).  When the post office was set up, they decided to name the town Ptarmigan after the bird found prominently in the area.  (Pronounced Tar-me-gan)  The bird looks very much like a pure white chicken.  When the people couldn’t decide on the correct spelling, they decided to make it simple and call it Chicken.  

Ptarmigan is now the Alaskan State Bird.  Summer population of Chicken 30-50 booming.  Winter population 17.

I’m exhausted and very glad I didn’t actually have to drive over the Top of the World Highway.  That would have been very hard since I closed my eyes and whistled Dixie through a lot of the ride.

Until later, Dolores and Richard

1. Chicken Poop   2. Our bus crossing the Yukon River  3.  Downtown Chicken, Alaska

Happy Solstice!!  We just returned from the Top of the World Dome overlooking the whole Dawson Valley.  From up there we, along with many others, celebrated the longest day of the year.  I’m not sure which was the most fun–watching the midnight sun hover above the moutains or watching the stream of characters who traipsed up on top of the dome.  If I wrote about the clothes some of them wore, or things they did you all would think I’d lost my mind.  Of course, that could be true anyway since I’ve been given Richard a piece for years.  Not much left. 

What they wore–One guy wore layers of skirts and capes in bright blues and purples.  He also had a scabbard with an arrow or a sword or maybe it was just a big stick.  Who knows?  One girl had one pink sock and one red sock.  Another had a hat that looked like a dragon head. 

What they did–One old hippie sat on the ground, backed into a ground-level pine tree and rolled him a cigarette that when lit made rings of blue smoke which disappeared into the upper branches of the pine tree.  I think a couple of pine cones may have staggered and fell off their branch. 

The police had set up a checkpoint and when we stopped they took one look at us and decided we weren’t the kind who would smuggle wine up to the top of the dome for public drinking.  Jeannie and I smiled sweetly at the cute little fellow and we were quickly on our way up the road with our box wine and red plastic cups hidden in the back of the Jeep.  We were going to celebrate.  What did they expect? 

Earlier today, we took a tour of Dredge No. 4, the largest wooden hull dredge in the world.  It’s a BIG sucker and although how it worked was explained in detail, I’m not sure I thoroughly understood it all.  However, that won’t stop me from trying to give you a few of the details that did stick in my brain.

It weighed 300,000 tons.  It floated in its own pond of water.  The front was a converyor belt of big buckets.  I believe there were 56 buckets.  They would dig into the earth, send the buckets into the dredge where the contents would be dumped on another converyor belt which sorted all material 1 1/2″ in size.  Anything 11/2″ or smaller would then go into a hopper where the dirt was removed.  It was then sent through a sluice box where, since it is heavier than the other material, the gold would sink to a mat which held the gold while the water washed everything else out the back of the dredge through a shoot (maybe about 75 feet long, not sure).  This made piles of the remaining dirt and rocks.  These are called tailings and they cover the land all around Dawson making it look like a giant gopher has been hard at work.  

Dredge No. 4 closed down in 1959 and after thirty years of being abandoned, the parks department took it over and removed the ice and silt filling the bottom floor.  Because it froze quickly, everything on the bottom floor was like it was when it was abandoned–black smith shop with tools still in good shape.  They made a permanant foundation and in 1992, they made a pond and floated the dredge onto the foundation it is on today. 

If we had an extra day here, Jack, Jeannie, Richard, and I thought we would like to go digging in the tailings for pieces of gold bigger than 1 1/2″.  The ranger assured us, that no nuggets bigger than that were ever found in this area, but what if they were wrong.  It is 1:30 am and the midnight sun is still shining brightly.  I could get a little digging done before we pull out tomorrow at 9:00 am headed for Chicken, Alaska.  Yes, there is really a place called Chicken, Alaska, but the most important part of that statement is ALASKA.  By tonight, I’ll be able to say we finally made it to ALASKA.

Until later, Dolores and Richard

1.)  The Midnight Sun

2.)  Jeannie and I freezing on top of the Dome

3.)  Dredge No. 4-a national monument 

Today was sightseeing day in Dawson City.  First we went to the Commissioner’s Residence.  It was built at the turn of the century and now is a historic site.  The bottom floor has been restored as it would have been when the last residents, George and Martha Black, lived there until 1916. 

Martha Black was quite a woman.  Her husband had planned to take her from the US to the Klondike during the gold rush, but at the last minute he went to the Sandwich Islands instead.  Martha decided to go anyway.  She and her brother came over the Chilkoot trail.  She was pregnant at the time.  (A parting gift from her husband.)  She worked placer gold claims, lived in a log cabin.  She became successful owning a mining camp and she managed a sawmill.  She later married Commissioner George Black and at 70 years of age, she became involved in the Canadian government.  Her biography is Martha Black-her story from the gold fields of Dawson to the halls of Parliament. 

The four of us took a walking tour through Dawson City.  As the young man dressed in period costume told us the history of the town, we strolled along the boardwalks and went inside several of them which are only accessible by going on the tour.  We saw the post office, the bank, a saloon.  We saw the outside of small buildings still standing from the original red-light district.  The last brothel closed in the early 1960’s.  The tour guide did a good job.

We went to the 10:30 show at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s.  It is a casino and has dance-hall type revue complete with can-can dancers.  They changed costumes several times and did an amazing show.  All the things to see in northern Canada and into Alaska are operated by people (young and old) who come here from May until the end of August and work doing all kinds of jobs-waiters/waitresses, singers, dancers, tour guides, store clerks.  The list goes on and on.  It ’s fun to talk to them and find out where they are from. 

We all enjoyed downtown Dawson City.

Until Later,

Dolores and Richard

1.)  Can-Can Dancers

2.)  Upscale Saloon

3.)  Commissioner’s Residence Dining Room

4.)  Bank

5.)  Diamond Tooth Gertie

6.)  Commissioner’s Residence

Jeannie and I went into downtown Dawson City yesterday.  We walked the wooden sidewalks and gravel roads.  All the streets are lined with buildings that have been restored to the days of the Klondike Gold Rush.  Dawson City is located on the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike River.  It was on the Bonanza Creek where gold was first discovered and shortly thereafter the stampede of hopeful miners started. 

Today, we went out to the exact spot where the first claim was made by George Carmack.  A little farther up the creek, Richard, Jack, and Jeannie tried their hand at panning for gold.  I took pictures of the big event mainly because if I got down there like they did, we would have had to borrow a piece of machinery from one of the active gold mining companies near by to get me out of the creek.  By then hypothermia would have kicked in and Richard would have had to write this blog.

Tonight we went to poet Robert Service’s cabin.  He is one of my favorite poets because he is funny and his poetry rhymes.  My favorite of his poem is The Cremation of Sam McGee.  A man dressed in period costume told us a humorous story of Robert Service’s life including the years he lived in the Yukon. 

As I said, I’ve always loved the poem about Sam McGee since junior high school when I had to memorize a part of it.  While we were visiting a museum in Whitehorse, I learned that Sam McGee was a real person.  He wasn’t cremated and he wasn’t from Tennesee, but he was an acquaintance of Mr. Service and the poet asked permission to use Sam McGee’s name in his poem because it worked better than the name he’d originally used.  Sam McGee’s actual cabin was part of the museum.  If you ever get a chance to read some of Robert Service’s poetry, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Until later,

Dolores and Richard

1.)  Jack London’s cabin where he wrote Call of the Wild

2.)  Robert Service’s cabin

3.)  Klondike Jeannie

4.)  Richard, Jack, and Jeannie panning for Gold

5.)  Exact spot where first gold claim was filed

Yesterday we left Whitehorse headed to Dawson City in the Yukon.  We went half way and then pulled into a pull-out along the way.  We dry camped overnight along with other travelers in motorhomes and some pitched tents near the tree line.

We arrived in Dawson in time to eat.  Jeannie and I take turns cooking our evening meal.  It was my turn and we had just sat down to eat when Richard looked out the window and started yelling, “Look, there’s a bear.”  The big, black bear had come out of the woods and knocked over a trash can just on the other side of Jack and Jeannie’s motorhome.  For the next 20-30 minutes Richard and Jack were in the Jeep playing bear wranglers.  A couple of rangers showed up and shot the poor thing with rubber bullets.  He ran off into the woods.

We went scouting the area for an hour or so and when we got back the ranger was back and had chased the bear away again.  Last night, the critter returned and was playing around in the kid’s playground.  We were told that if he continues they will have to trap it and dispose of it.  He is so cute, I hate to think about that, but they assured me it would be necessary.

Here are some pictures of the road to Dawson.  The flowers along the way are fireweed.  They are the state (?) flower of the Yukon.  Forget-me-nots is Alaska’s state flower.  It should be fireweed because I remember it being all over the place up there as well as wild orchids and roses.

Until later,

Dolores and Richard

1.) Black bear eating something out of a cup

right next to our motor homes.

2.)  Jeannie in front of remnants of old roadhouse between Whitehorse and Dawson City 

3.)  Fireweed along road to Dawson City

While in Skagway, I learned about two characters from the gold rush days.  Jefferson “Soapy” Smith was known as the “King of the Frontier Con Men.”  We was born in Newnan, Georgia to a wealthy plantation owner and lawyer who, by the end of the Civil War had met financial ruins.  The Smith’s moved west.  By the time Soapy was 18 he was well on his way to becoming the best known confidence man in the west. 

In Denver and Creede, Colorado, Soapy had a major hand in setting up organized crime.  Eventually he moved to Skagway.  He got his nickname because he would set up a box on a tripod in the streets.  As people gathered, he would wrap paper money ($100-20-10-5-1) around several bars of soap.  He would then wrap the soap in plain paper.  Then he would sell the soap to anyone who wanted to take a chance.  With slight of hand, he would give them soap with no money, but to keep people interested he would have a couple of his gang members planted in the audience to open soap with $100 bills in it.  Worked into a frenzy, the audience would start a bidding war.

That was how Soapy got his name, but he did many other things to separate people from the money and gold the miners had brought back to Skagway from Dawson City.  Soapy had an office in Skagway called Jeff Smith’s Parlor.  People would go into the parlon where Soapy had a telegraph key which wasn’t connected to anyplace.  He would take money for his service of sending telegraphs which of course never went over the airways.

July 8, 1898, three of Soapy’s gang members cheated a man out of his $2,800 worth of gold in a rigged card game.  When the man balked at being cheated, the town formed a vigilante group and went in search of Soapy and his gang.  When they came face to face, one of the vigilantes, Frank Reid, and Soapy engaged in gun fire.  Soapy died instantly with a bullet to his heart.  Frank Reid lived for 12 days with a bullet in his groin.  The two men are buried close together.  Reid’s headstone reads, “He died for the honor of Skagway.”  The three gang members who bilked the miner of his gold received jail sentences and the rest of the gang dispersed.

There were a lot of women who came to the Klondike during the gold rush days.  One was Mollie Walsh.  She went to Skagway from Butte, Montana.  She worked as a waitress and was very involved in her church.  She had a run in with Soapy Smith, and because of the way his organized crime gang operated, Mollie moved north to Log Cabin (actual name of town) next to the Mounted Police station.  There she opened a grub tent, feeding the miners.  She met a man named “Trapper Jack” Newman who was quite taken with Mollie. 

She also met a man named Mike Bartlett.  She married Mike and they moved back to Seattle.  They had a son.  Mike’s business started to fail and he began gambling and drinking heavily.  Their marriage fell apart and she ran away with her son in tow.  Mike found her and he brought her back to Seattle.  In 1902, she tried to get the police to arrest him because he “abused her in all ways and threatened to do away with her.”   She withdrew her complaint.  A week later Mike chased her down a alley by their home and shot her in the back.  He claimed temporary insanity and was acquited.  Two years later, he hung himself.

Had it not been for Trapper Jack’s love for Mollie, she would have disappeared in history.  Jack commissioned a bust of Mollie and it has been placed at a children’s park in Skagway named for Mollie.

That is only two of the hundreds of characters who stepped upon the stage during the Klondike Gold Rush.  But I thought they were interesting. 

1.)  Street in Skagway, Alaska

2.) Mollie Walsh bust at children’s park

3.) On the road to Skagway.

While we were camped in Whitehorse, we took a side trip (108 miles one way) to Skagway, Alaska.  The road winds through beautiful mountains, lakes, glaciers and waterways, dropping from an elevation around 3,000 feet to 0. 

In 1896 gold was found in the Klondike.  In the summer of 1897 thousands of men and women chasing their dreams to become rich sailed into the harbor of Skagway.  From there they had to make their way up the Chilkoot Trail (shorter but more rigorous) or the White Pass (longer but less rigorous) for 33 miles.   During the first year of the discovery of gold, many lives were lost because the minors were unprepared to survive the wilderness and artic weather.

At the pass at the top of the trail, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) required the hopeful miners to have 2,000 pounds of provisions before they would be allowed to enter Canada.  In order to get their “ton of goods” to their destinations, they would have to carry what they could a ways and then go back and get more, making several trips to get it all. 

After they had made it over the pass they then had to hire or make a boat to make the 500-mile trip down the rapidly moving water of the Yukon River to Dawson City where the gold mines were.

Here is what the miners were required to take into Canada:

• 150 lb. bacon
• 400 lb. flour
• 25 lb. rolled oats
• 125 lb. beans
• 10 lb. tea
• 10 lb. coffee
• 25 lb. sugar
• 25 lb. dried potatoes
• 2 lb. dried onions
• 15 lb. salt
• 1 lb. pepper
• 75 lb. dried fruits
• 8 lb. baking powder
• 2 lb. soda
• 1/2 lb. evaporated vinegar
• 12 oz. compressed soup
• 1 can mustard
• 1 tin matches (for four men)
• Stove for four men
• Gold pan for each
• Set granite buckets
• Large bucket
• Knife, fork, spoon, cup, and plate
• Frying pan
• Coffee and teapot
• Scythe stone
• Two picks and one shovel
• One whipsaw
• Pack strap
• Two axes for four men and one extra handle
• Six 8 inch files and two taper files for the party
• Draw knife, brace and bits, jack plane, and hammer for party
• 200 feet three-eights-inch rope
• 8 lb. of pitch and 5 lb. of oakum for four men
• Nails, five lbs. each of 6,8,10 and 12 penny, for four men
• Tent, 10 x 12 feet for four men
• Canvas for wrapping
• Two oil blankets to each boat
• 5 yards of mosquito netting for each man
• 3 suits of heavy underwear
• 1 heavy mackinaw coat
• 2 pairs heavy machinaw trousers
• 1 heavy rubber-lined coat
• 1 doz heavy wool socks
• 1/2 doz heavy wool mittens
• 2 heavy overshirts
• 2 pairs heavy snagproof rubber boots
• 2 pairs shoes
• 4 pairs blankets (for two men)
• 4 towels
• 2 pairs overalls
• 1 suit oil clothing
• Several changes of summer clothing
• Small assortment of medicines

Today, hikers can walk the Chilkoot Trail in 3 to 5 days.  It took those in the gold rush 3 months to make the arduous trek.

1.)  Emerald Lake-sunlight reflects off white river bottom

2.)  Jeannie and Jack-small glaciers in mountain behind them

3.  White Pass train going from Fraser to Skagway passing glaciers, falls, ice fields.

Watson Lake to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory–We’ve had a couple of wilderness travel days.  Pictures do not do the magnificent scenery justice. 

The last time Richard and I were in Watson Lake, we were traveling in a van from Vancouver to Anchorage to join a 15-day train, bus, cruise ship through Alaska.  We were delivering the van to family in Anchorage.  We left our motor home in Vancouver.  That is where the cruise ship landed after our trip.  Anyway, on our last trip through this area, we stayed in the lodges.  Most had been built shortly after the Alaskan Highway became a tourist route to Alaska. 

At Watson Lake we stayed in one of those lodges.  I asked the YOUNG lady behind the counter when the lodge had been built and she said it was REALLY old.  It was built in 1949.  I resented that because I was built in 1949.  This time the lodge had all its windows nailed shut.  Like so many of the old lodges, it was deserted.

Right next to the lodge is one of the most memorable attractions along the Alaskan Highway.  During the construction of the highway, some of the builders made a sign post with their hometowns on it.  Since then travelers have added their own signs.  Howard and Mary Jane added one on one of their trips through there.  Jack and Jeannie added one of their Arkansas tags.  The signpost forest holds well of over 60,000 signs.  It is quite a sight.

We also went to a museum which explained the distance from earth to other planets and beyond.  They talked about light years and how the images we see from our satellites were sent to us millions of light years ago.  Huh?  Bake chocolate cake in 350 degree oven 30 minutes or until toothpick stuck in center of cake comes out clean.  I understand that.  Light years away goes way over my head.  Pardon the pun.  We were in reclining chairs looking at a dome ceiling traveling through space with actual pictures taken.  After that they did a really great show of Northern Lights set to music.  Really great.

We spent the night at Swift River on the continental divide.  We decided to eat at the lodge.  We had meatloaf (two huge slices each–enough to feed a lumberjack), mashed potatoes, peas, salad.  We took our rhubarb pie with us for another day.  They had internet, but only if you were parked in front of their building.  Once we were in the campsite, we didn’t have it.  Around 11:30 at night, Richard and I took my laptop and walked toward the front hoping to get online.  We made it to the playground, set it on a pole next to the swings.  We were able to hear “You’ve got mail,” but we couldn’t see the screen because it is broad daylight!!  We gave up.  I’m sure we were quite a sight zigzagging through the park in search of the illusive internet signal.  However, I’ll bet we weren’t the first travelers to do that.  Some people watch for wildlife to take pictures of.  If I owned that lodge, I’d take pictures of people roaming the land with laptops.  I’d make an album with description.  “June 12, 2008-Couple from Florida–man standing on rock steading his wife who sat on top of bear-proof trash can.”

We are in Whitehorse (capital of Yukon Territory) and will be here for a couple of days.  We have great internet and, dare I say it, cable television.  WooHoo!!

I’ll be able to post everyday for the next few days. 

Until Later,

Dolores and Richard

1.  Watson Lake Lodge (Closed)

2.  Watson Lake Signpost Forest (Richard and Jeannie)

3. Jack nailing license to post

4. Jack pointing to license on post

5. Beautiful scenery east of Whitehorse