Home again

News Flash!!!  The carpenters are home again.

Well we made it.  The last part of our trip was a visit with family like we have done before, so there was not the newness of the Alaska trip.  There is something good about that, too.  It is nice to drive into places where we have been before and know where and what we are doing.

GOLD PANNING WITH GRANDKIDS

As I told one person at the gold mine store, "If my granddad had come home from Alaska with a bag of gold dirt and a pan and let me pan for gold, heaven knows what my life would have been!"   Well, we'll see because I brought some for some of the grandkids.  They all had fun with the pan and liked the gold.  Most thought a big jar of gold would have been better.  That's true. 

Well, I have tried to load pictures here, but they won't load, so I quit. 

SO, HOW FAR AWAY IS ALASKA?

As you might guess, a long way.  We drove 11, 021 miles on this trip.

People we met.

One thing that stands out in my memory of this trip is the interesting collection of people that we met in the lower 48, in Canada, and in Alaska.  We were treated to pleasant times with people all over.  I can only think of one adverse interaction with an old grump while fishing who said: "Go home, Alaska is already full!"

There was the old fellow from Alberta who I helped move a table that was too heavy.  Over that evening and the next morning, he treated me to a number of interesting and somewhat pithy comments like, "You have to get to the Yukon to get good sourdough bread...they don't know how to make it here."  His description of the sticky buns at the Haines Junction Bakery was accompanied by an expression that reminded me of Cole Gergely trying to pick the perfect donut out of the box at breakfast.  We stopped at the bakery on the way up and on the way back.  He was right.

WE went to dinner at a restaurant recommended by the RV campground owners in St. George, BC.  The people at the table next to us recognized us as from the lower US and visited with us about Canada.  He and his wife were from New Brunswick and had been transferred to British Columbia not too long ago.  I think they were lonely for the part of Canada that had been their long-time home.  I think we should visit New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces of Canada to see the wonderful sights that he described.  His comment about British Columbia is that its all trees, just trees.  Over the next week, we found out just how true that was.

The woman who examined Pat's arm in the Soldotna, AK hospital took time to tell us about growing up in Soldotna fishing as a little girl and catching big salmon from the rivers around there.  She described how the fish population had shrunk in number and size and the importance of the work to preserve the fish that everyone around the world loves to eat.  She made us feel comfortable and was very comforting to Pat, taking great care of her.

The nurses  aid who helped Pat while her cast was being put on in Anchorage had grown up in Oregon, moved to Homer and been a commercial fisherwoman before she began working as a nurses aid.  She described being out in the ocean in winter catching the salmon, tuna, and haddock that we buy in the stores and how you came to terms with the fact that if you ever went overboard, you would be dead before they could turn the boat around.  She enjoyed the solitude out there and enjoyed her job.

Then there was Karen who could be a tough businesswoman, but had a heart of gold. Disrupting her RV repair schedule to take care of us and get everything fixed, she fixed the tow and the rv so we could continue our vacation.  All the while she fed us cake and breakfast and let us stay in her parking lot rather than pay for a rv parking spot.  Then she worried about us until we called her from Tok to tell her that everything worked.

And Eddie who we found on the shore of Lake Kulane in the Yukon with a broken down car.  His alternator had quit so we jumped his battery and followed him up the highway to his house, going about 10 miles between battery charges.  While he and I stood outside on the side of the road charging the battery, he told me about panning for gold in the mountains, running from Grizzly bears while working on the highway, and the fact that there had been a Sasquatch sighting near Haines Junction.

And the people at an rv park just outside Edmonton, AB who let us dry camp on their manicured lawn rather than turn us away because they were full. 

The woman in Dawson City who cut my hair while telling me about living there in the winter and sharing ski patrol stories with me because she had done that while in high school.  She was trained as a true barber and shaved you with a straight razor, something I haven't seen in a lot of years.  She truly loved where she lived and enjoyed winter being outside in the cold Canadian winter temperatures.  Just bundle up and be careful.

Glaciers I have known

Glaciers I have known.

OK, so I have learned some stuff about glaciers that I didn't know before and that I find interesting. So here goes.  About 10% of the earth's surface is covered in glacer ice and about 75% of the earth's fresh water is contained in them.  At the height of the last ice age, about 35% of the earth's surface was covered with glaciers.  When the ice looks white, it still contains tiny bubbles of air.  After the  ice has been compressed by its weight, the air is forced out and it looks blue.

Here you can see the blue in the ice
 of the exit glacier near Seward 

 They are not just big blocks of ice that slide down hills or make lakes in Denali. Beginning with the obvious, if enough snow falls that it can't all melt in the summer, the snow builds up. The weight of the snow changes it to ice. The pressure of the huge layer of ice causes the it to melt at the base of the glacier so that the whole thing is sitting on a layer of water that lubricates its movement over the bedrock. There is always water flowing out of the base of a glacier unless they are at really cold places like the South Pole. Note that this business of water liquifying under pressure instead of staying ice is one of the really unique properties of water. Most things solidify under pressure but water does not. Ice is also less dense than water, so it floats. That is also unique. All right, enough physics.

Now, we have this huge slab of ice on a rollercoaster ride down the mountain. It can speed up or slow down; it can bend downward or bend upward. The top and bottom can move at different speeds. All of this causes the ice to crack open or push up in ridges. Scientists who have drilled holes in the ice see that the holes never stay straight. The hole bends as the ice travels its different speeds.




The lower end of a network of water conduits

The water coming from a glacier not only comes from underneath it, but also from the top surface of the glacier in the summer. As the sun melts the ice, rivers form on the top and flow downward. The ice in the glacier is very hard and not easily penetrated. However, the top water can flow into cracks and begin to melt its way through the glacier. These openings become the beginning of a network of "pipes" through the glacier where the water is staying liquid even though the temperature is below freezing. I remember seeing a Nova show on some French scuba divers who dove into these openings with movie camera. They were in water that was several degrees below freezing but still liquid. The pictures were amazing and they were some brave people.

this gives you some idea
of how big the opening is

So now look again at the picture of me standing in front of the "cave" in the face of the Worthington Glacier near Valdez and realize that it is the opening of one of these pipes. In this picture you can see a little way up inside the glacier.

The top of the glacier is a field of ice with the only thing showing above the ice are the tops of mountains which appear as rocky hills above the ice. Individual glaciers then come from the ice field down different mountain valleys, so several glaciers can share the same ice field. You can see this in the picture of the Portage Glacier with the Spencer glacier to its right. The Northeastern side of the Kenai peninsula is very mountainous and the Harding ice field that is 40 by 60 miles starting at the area south of Seward. Many of the glaciers go down to the ocean and form icebergs. This area is known as the Kenai Fjords National Park. Just at the north edge of Seward is a place where you can walk up to the Exit Glacier which is coming from the northern edge of the ice field. Again you can see the water coming out from under it.

As the glacier ice moves down to the foot of the glacier, it collects rock and earth that can be pushed onto the front and top faces of the ice.  In several of the glaciers I visited, they looked dirty, but when you picked up some of this material it was rocky and gritty with no organic matter such as you find in most soil.  An extreme example of this is the foot of one of the northeast glacier forks coming off of Mt. McKinley.  The central bench in this picture is actually the edge of the ice that has come some 16 miles down from the mountain and collected enough stuff on it to grow grass.  It looks like a canyon wall, but is ice.

More information about glaciers

Girdwood and gold panning

So we left Denali, drove south, and spent one night in Anchorage. The next day we took the time to get the truck serviced and do some running around that was needed. Then we treated ourselves to a lunch at our favorite restaurant, Ginger, that would remind you of the Winds with a Thai bent. We had been there before when we stayed in Anchorage to get Pat's wrist cast and found their food really to our liking. We were not disappointed this time. We'll probably find an excuse to go there again.

We left Anchorage and drove the 40 or so miles south along Turnagain Arm to Girdwood. We were here before and had decided to stay in the Ski run parking lot, but couldn't because there was a festival going on. This time we settled in and have been here for two days. These are gold panning days for Bob, the prospector. I went to the Crow Creek mine and paid for access to their land. After 6 hours of panning I had a couple of specks of gold, answering the question, "If you inherit a played out gold mine from your grandfather, what do you do with it?" Answer: "Charge tourists to try to find gold there." Saturday we drove down onto the Kenai Penninsula and tried panning a creek down there. No luck. I guess if gold were easy to find, it wouldn't be valuable. The salmon have run into the rivers and there will be another run in a week or so. As a result, you have to be careful where you pan so as not to destroy the fish nests. That stopped me from trying a more extensive panning expedition. This is not an issue around Chicken, so I will try up there next. So far, if you want to find your fortune panning for gold, get a job as a greeter at Walmart, the pay is better.

We drove to Hope, AK. It is a vanishingly small town on the south side of Turnagain Arm. I guess the fishing was on there because the place was packed with fishermen. Watching the action, I did not see any fish being caught, but it was between tides. Lunch on the side of the road while we wished Sheila Happy Birthday. As I enjoyed the beauty of having green marshlands, snow capped mountains with glaciers and the sea all in one place, I realized what was making this so unusual. On one range of mountains that ran down to the water you went all the way from sea level up so high that you were above the timber line and on up into tundra. That is an amazing range of climates on one hill.

Back in the lower 48...but they took our GRAPES

We went through customs the day we left Lethridge.  This time we came through a busy customs portal on I 15.  We had to wait quite a while.  The customs agent was very polite and business-like and wanted to know what food we had in the refrigerator.  Who can remember that after 10 weeks of travel.  There are things in there that must be alive!  She was obviously used to this so she talked us through finding out.  Pat was looking in the fridge, shouting things to me, and I was talking out the driver's window.  So go figure, what we couldn't bring into the US was a small bunch of green grapes.  The grapes in our chicken salad were ok, though. ??????

We have continued through Montanna and into Wyoming and are sitting in Cheyenne.  Tomorrow its Denver.

Alaska pipeline

The ALESKA Pipeline, or trans-Alaska pipeline, or TAP, goes the entire length of Alaska from the very north to Valdez. It's 800 miles long and moves about 10% of Americas oil. It transports from as much as about 2.5 million to as little as 500,000 barrels per day, depending on demand. From Valdez, the oil is taken by ship to California and some to Texas through the Panama Canal.  Pipeline facts

Getting to stand by it and listen to how it works and why it is built the way it is can't be duplicated by a link.  We were treated to a short lecture about the pipeline as part of our visit to the gold dredge.   Wherever there is permafrost, the pipeline is above ground. Where there is no permafrost, it is buried. About half of the pipeline is buried.  The above ground portions are supported by vertical supports.



 

Here the pipeline is buried and what you see is the service road
going ovet the hill.

There was great concern about melting the permafrost and both altering the environment and destabilizing the support for thousands of miles of pipe. Here you can see that the pipe sits on an H shaped support. The center of the H is designed to move and the pipe rests on it. This is a provision to protect against earthquake and to allow the pipe to expand and contract. The pipe itself is 4-feet in diameter and what you see is the outer shell of an insulating layer that keeps heat in the oil so that it will flow. At the top of many of the H supports there is an aluminum radiator. There is a system in the H that carries heat away from the ground and radiates it into the air, protecting the ground from melting. There are sections of the pipeline that zig zag up and down hills. They serve to give the pipeline some springiness.

We just had to have some "we were there" pictures, so we snuck up against some of the supports and went click.  You can get some idea of how big this thing is.  By the way, it turns out that one of the great environmental concerns was not an issue.  Further north from where we are is the range of the largest Caribou herds in Alaska, over 500,000 animals.  There was concern that the pipeline would disturb their migration patterns and put them in serious jeopardy.  It turns out that the Caribou ignore the pipeline completely.

In the next picture, you can see the pipeline coming out of the hillside and passing by us.  We were at the No 8 Dredge historic park and part of the tour was a description of the pipeline.  The little house in the foreground provides what is called cathodic protection for the pipeline.  It keeps the pipe from rusting.  It turns out that it is also necessary to scrub the inside of the pipe to remove accumulated sludge.  To do this, they shuttle what is called a pig into the pipe and use the oil to push it along.  At various points in the pipeline are systems to introduce and remove these pigs.  An example of this is in the picture of a cutaway part of a section of pipeline pipe. 

This is a dumb pig, but now they use smart pigs that have instruments in them to inspect the pipe as the pig moves through it.

Critters a third time

Do you know what this critter is?

 Rarely seen in the wild in southern Wyoming.  Habitat includes the Wyoming grasslands east of the western mountain ranges.  Has been seen in the Medicine Bow range near Laramie. This specimen was found at the AB Barbeque in Cheyenne Wyoming.

Chicken At Lasta

Chicken, the tourist trap at the end of 65 miles of bad road.

In Alaska they number the highways. As far as I can tell, they haven't reached double digits yet. They also call dirt roads highways. One is Highway 5 to Chicken and Eagle Alaska. We left the RV behind and drove the truck up there, its easier and a tougher vehicle. So why go to Chicken?...can you pass up a place with a name like that?

It really is named Chicken. It's attraction is gold mining. Back when, they decided to name the place and there were many ptarmigan running around there, so they decided to name it ptarmigan, but couldn't agree on how to spell the bird's name, so they gave up and called it Chicken.








This must be the mayor Of Chicken

 And, guess what, we saw a moose. This one was munching bottom plants out of a pond. Here are a couple of pictures. Now for the key question: "Do they keep their eyes open underwater?"

Maybe they wear goggles



The road in the background leads to Dawson City, YT

Here is the signpost leading to Chicken. Not muchthere.

Outhouses are in back

And here is downtown. It's really one building and one set of people. They go back and forth depending on where visitors are. They really live there in the Summer but move to Palmer in the winter. The main lady running the place had both feet in walking casts. She and Pat met each other on the trail to the outhouses and became instant companions in misery. After some visiting, I found out that the little bags of paydirt they sold really came from their mine which was the second right turn out of town (Would you like to buy it?). So I had to try a bag. I learned a lot about panning the real stuff. Their daughter helped us. I don't know about a teenager who is that good with gold pan. She has a real future. There were several other people panning in this trough but most of them didn't have the patience or Glenn's training so weren't too successful. I panned about 1/2 cup of what was in the bag and found an entertaining amount of color. The lady who ran the place said that she has a friend with an 11 year old son who comes by once a week and pans the bottom of the trough. He says there is a lot of gold in there and people aren't careful. That youngster has a bright future. He has a grip on two important facts already.

Like the Fairbanks region, the gold in Chicken is placer gold under permafrost, so they used the same dredging technology to get at it.  Here is a picture of the dredge that still sits at Chicken but is not running anymore.


Leaving Chicken going north, you come to an area on the South Fork of 40-mile River. It is a public panning area. I couldn't stay too long because we had to park in the road, but I found color in the sand that I tested. So I scooped up a bucketfull. Dirt for Glenn!

We drove back to Tok (rhymes with smoke), and tomorrow we're heading home. That's good and bad.

South to Montanna...Goodby Alaska

Well, we left Tok for Canada, retracing our steps down the Alaska Highway.  Earlier in this trip we thought about coming back a different way, but we need to get home sometime and adding another month on the trip probably is unrealistic. 

Traveling on the ARTT

We have decided that if they had a contest to develop an acronym for the Alaska Highway (way too much of a mouthful to be saying all the time), it should be ARTT, you could have slogans like

         Eschew Boredom, Travel the ARTT

Why ARTT, that stands for Asphalt Road Through Trees.   After five days or so, you'll understand.


Our first stop was at Cottonwood RV park at Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory.  We stayed there on the way up..where I took the picture after midnight.  It was such a nice place that we decided to stay there on the way home.  That is an area where there is a concentration of grizzly bears, so we went out driving to see if we could see any.  We drove up the highway and over gravel roads.  All we found was a guy named Eddie whose car had broken down at the end of a boat ramp at the lake.  His alternator was bad and he was really stuck.  So we jumped his car and followed him back home to Burwash Bay.  He got about 5-7 miles up the road before his battery went flat again.  We'd pull the cars together and give his battery another boost and off we'd go.  While we were standing around waiting for the battery to charge, I learned that he had panned gold out of the mountains there, dodged grizzly bears while working on the highway, and was on the way to Haines Junction to check on a Sasquatch sighting when his car broke down.

Leaving Cottonwod RV park, we drove down to Watson Lake, got gas, and kept going the road was good and the evening was mellow.  Along the way, we met these guys.  There were 43 of them wandering across the road and down the shoulders.  We stopped for the night at the Coal River Lodge and RV Park.  A simple place, not dolled up, run by a really nice, hard working family.  We had a good sleep and a nice breakfast.  We were on our way.

 

It was a long day's drive through four mountain ranges and a lot of road construction to get to Ft. Nelson, where we spent the night.  More buffalo along the way.  They can really bring traffic to a stop!

FLASH:  SOMETHING WIERD HAPPENED TONIGHT....IT GOT DARK!

I guess we are going to have to get used to darkness again.  It was kind of handy being avle to do things as late as you wanted to.  Summer in Alaska is not for morning people, they were still paving the roads at 11 pm.  If you do that, you won't get up early very often.  I wonder about winter time, though.

Back to Milepost 0 at Dawson Creek. 

 We're winding the trip backwards. Reversing what we did on the way to Alaska.   After a day's driving we are back to the south end of the Alaska Highway.  We hate to leave it.  Tomorrow we are going to head in a slightly different direction.  We came up through the Canadian Rockies and doglegged west to get to Dawson Creek.  Going back we are going southeast to Edmonton.

Made it to Edmonton

This set of roads is obviously the main thoroughfare from Edmonton, the Provincial Capital, to the northwest part of the province.  It is a 4 lane  divided highway all the way with a 68 mph speed limit on it.  (Actually 110 km/hr, but that's 68 on our dial.)  You leave the hills and get into the prairie lands pretty quickly.  We stayed in a park just west of the city with some people who were kind enough to let us park on the lawn because all their spaces were full.  This is a big holiday weekend in Canada and they are certainly out holidaying.  Good for them.

Lethbridge is next.

Leaving the Edmonton area we headed south on Highway 2.  More fast, divided highway; again obviously a major thoroughfare.  This time for I 15 in Montana.  Traffic was terrible and I witnessed some of the worst driving habits I have ever seen.  Less than 1 car length between cars and others weaving through the traffic.  All at 68 mph.  I'll bet that the traffic toll on that road is horrible.  I ran out of energy at Lethbridge, about 60 miles from the border so we stopped at an RV park.  Seems like there was some bid time baseball league going on in town and everything was full.  But, while we were standing at the counter, the clerk took a call from someone who had to cancel due to family problems.  So, we got a place!  Next stop, the lower 48, hurray.

Critter count-updated

So this post is for all the critter pictures we have taken and is also a test for grandchildren.  Can you match the picture with the number of the animal in the list?   In some cases we weren't able to get a good picture, so I downloaded one.

 Here is the list:

1. Moose. many, many

2. Bear, four...far away, which is good

3. Elk, napping in the trees

4. Dahl Sheep. on the mountain side

5. Rock Goat. in the middle of the road!

6. Caribou several small herds.  The big herd is way north and has about 600,000 animals.

7. Deer. only a few

8. Seal. swimming in the Valdez harbor

9. Otter  swimming near us while we fished for halibut

10. Halibut. on my hook!

11. Rockfish. in my freezer

12. Salmon. NOT on my hook..in the grocery

13. Squirrel, all over...yeah!

14. Chipmunk. usually running across the road in front of us

15. Eagle. in Valdez

16. Seagull, everywhere...airborne rats!

17. Buffalo

18. Kodiak Brown Bear  stuffed, thank goodness!

19. Mosquito,  Alaska state bird...they own the woods.



OK, SO I HAVE RUN OUT OF ROOM AND PATIENCE,
HERE IS A LINK FOR FINDING ANIMALS

DISASTER..NARROWLY AVERTED

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Monday we set off towards home after Pat's doctor visit.  That went well, her wrist bone is healing so well you can't see where it separated and the shape is normal.

We packed up the RV and got on the highway leaving Anchorage about 4:30 pm.  Rush hour was just startin;  plenty of traffic.  I felt the RV jolt, then keep going.  When I looked in the rear camera, the truck was loose, held to the RV only by the safety cables.  It was weaving across lanes and hit the RV every time I tried to slow down.  It finally ran up against the passenger's rear corner of the RV and I was able to slow down and force the truck onto the shoulder.  Only one of the safety cables was left, the other had broken.  Thank God that it held.  If that truck had come loose, someone would have died with all the traffic.  To shorten a long story, we returned to town and got a space in the RV park we had just left.  The tow bar had separated where the two halves were joined by a bolt.  The nut had backed off completely.

The driver's side front fender of the truck was bashed in and the passenger rear of the Rv was scratched up with small dents.  The RV rear bumper was broken loose on that side and damaged where the truck front tire had rubbed against it.  That's all!  We went to Karen's RV Repair and she was able to sell us a new hitch and a new brake control system.  The parts were ordered yesterday and are here today.  We are sitting st Karen's while they work on things.

Yesterday we had the truck inspected and the front end aligned.  We found a man who could pull front fender out, straighten the bumper, and prime the repair.  He did a good job.  So, the truck is ready to go.  I reattached the bumper to the RV and it will get us home.

Currently we should be able to leave for home tomorrow or Friday morning.

Digging for GOLD, Fairbanks style

Books can be written about Alaska and gold, there are many. As much as I have enjoyed those stories since I was a kid, standing on the ground and imagining what winter must have been like with no modern conveniences and having to work outdoors all year long gives those stories of panning gold a new meaning.
 Fairbanks is a city built on gold and oil.  What a start in life.  Originally there were sourdough miners in small numbers panning gold out of the gravel around here.  In 1902 Felix Pedro found gold on what is now known as Pedro Creek.  He and a couple of others were nearly starving when they saw smoke on the horizon and headed down to it. On the banks of the Chena River they found Captain E.T. Barnett and the steam boat Lavelle Young.  The Captain had wrecked the boat in the shallows of the river.  He had intended to set up a trading post on the Tanana River, but couldn't get there with his boat.  Pedro told Barnett that they had found gold.  Barnett in turn sent two people down to Whitehorse with the news that there was a major gold strike.  There wasn't, but people poured in and Barnett outfitted them with supplies and equipment.   That was the beginning.  Check out this web site.

It's Saturday, July 11 and we set off to visit Gold Dredge No. 8, a tour for visitors.  We learned a lot and had good fun.  Here is the story.

The tour was a class act tourist thing. They have the last of the dredges built to strip gold from the gravel beds around Fairbanks. It is a behemoth. But in addition to letting you aboard this huge gold separator, they gave you a good understanding of how gold mining developed here and why it did.  We learned a lot about the history and methods of gold mining up here in a short time.



Miner operating a rocker box used where water was limited.

After Felix Pedro found gold, it became increasingly obvious that all the gold here was placer gold, i.e. washed in over the eons of time that this land was formed.  Initially the methods of separating gold from the gravel were panning and various forms of sluice boxes. 


Panning for gold, a demonstration

Around Fairbanks the land is a cover of soil on top of as much as 200 feet of gravel and rocks that is permanently frozen down to bedrock. The permafrost has to be melted before gold can be extracted.  During the summer, when the surface thaws out and streams are available, methods such as panning and sluice boxes were useful, but as soon as things began to freeze, gold mining stopped.  The permafrost prevented mining by simply digging up the gravel. 

Running a steam powered jenpole lift to bring ore to the surface

In spite of these difficulties, Miners started making shafts down to the rich gravel that lay close to the bedrock, thawing the permafrost by building fires and scooping out the melted material. Then they built another fire and scooped out the melted material, repeating this process over and over. They quickly learned that doing this in the summer led to disaster as the walls of the shaft they were creating caved in when the sun melted the sides. So they took to doing this in the winter. They went down as far as 35 feet this way to get below the permafrost. Then they dug lateral shafts sideways, loading buckets to bring to the surface. Shortly after this started, steam engine hoists were used to pull the loaded buckets up and carry the material off to a pile. All winter long they did this and spent the summer panning the piles of gold ore. This went on for years until people realized that they were only getting the large gold pieces and leaving gold behind.

 Two men, formed the Fairbanks Exploration Company (FEC) and set out to systematically search for gold. They brought steam hammers to the gold fields and 2-inch pipes through the permafrost and assayed the cores. They did this in a systematic fashion and developed logs that mapped out the gold deposits. All this took wood and water, both of which were in short supply. They built water pipelines and diverted water over mountain ridges and built railroads to haul equipment and wood. As you can see gold mining quit being a guy, a mule, and a pick.



Demonstration of water injectors to melt permafrost

The fields were extensive to stay ahead of dredging

To reach the gold, they stripped off the soil until they reached the top of the gravel beds. Then they pounded pipes into the gravel in square arrays of pipes that were connected to a water supply. All these water pipes were riveted iron sheet. They pumped water down into the ground until the permafrost was melted over several acres then mined it. This was enormously labor intensive. FEC decided to build dredges to "automate" the process.  These were huge floating barges that contained the ore refining machinery as well as a machine shop capable of repairing anything on the dredge.  They were built at Bethlehem Steel at Pittsburgh and disassembled there.  They were shipped to San Francisco and loaded on freighters.  From there they were shipped to Seward and loaded back onto the railroad and taken to Fairbanks.  At Fairbanks they were transferred to the local gold field railroad and taken to the gold fields.  At least 8 of them were built.  They were powered by electricity, so FEC built the largest power plant in Alaska to power them.  Since the dredge used so much water, they built a pump station in Fairbanks and a water pipeline over the mountains to the gold fields to supply the needed water.  Today the pump house is a really neat restaurant where we had an excellent dinner.

Dredge front showing bucket conveyor

Side view of front of dredge

Dredge No 8 is last one of these. Here is a link to an explanation of Dredge #8.  The front of it is a giant belt of buckets that picks up the gravel from the bottom to the top of the thawed layer. The gravel passes through a separator that washes the fines into a set of sluice boxes that run from the center to the sides of the dredge. The coarse gravel passes to the rear and is discarded by a conveyor belt to the tailings pile. This thing used 9000 gallons of water an hour. The sluice boxes worked like gold pans to separate the gold from the gravel. 

Once every two weeks, the dredge sluice boxes were cleaned. A separate crew of men disassembled and collected the gold from the sluices.  Gold collection extended to using mercury amalgamation to capture microscopic gold.

Gold ore storage boxes

The collected gold ore was put in iron boxes and stored in the company office. In 32 years, the dredge collected more than 7.5 million ounces of gold.  At today's prices that's more than $7,500,000,000!

Retort furnace used to melt gold.

The collected gold was melted and cast into bars. At that time the US was on the gold standard and gold could only be sold to the government at $35 an ounce. Here is the amazing part. After they made the gold bricks that weighed 90 lbs. each, they wrapped them in brown paper, addressed them, put postage on the package and mailed them to Fort Knox. They never lost a single brick!

Here is a water nozzle used to wash gravel loose

The other way to collect gold was to use water pressure to loosen the permafrost and some mines used the pressure developed by bringing the water over thousand foot tall mountains to wash the rock and gold loose with giant nozzles at the ends of pivoting iron pipes. We didn't learn much about this.

All this ended with World War II. During the war, all gold mining was suspended and after the war ended people went home, not to their work at the gold mines. Labor supplies dropped and operating costs became so high that they quit. They drilled holes in the dredges and sank them. The No 8 dredge was pumped out and the holes sealed so it sits in the water where it was left.

Pat striking it rich

You'll never forget how that gold looks as it appears through the gravel

After all of this, they taught us how to pan for gold. (Thanks, Glenn for your lessons. Its exactly what they did.) And we practiced on gold pokes they gave us.  We combined our fortune and bought Pat a locket to hold our gold.  It will double as a Christmas Tree ornament.

Since the Alaska Pipeline goes right through their property, they also gave us a lecture on the pipeline. That is a story for another post.

Finally, we went up on the Steele Highway to where there is a monument to Felix Pedro.  Across the street is the creed where he found gold.  You can pan on his original site, well worked over by now.  Prospector Bob gave it a try!  I am a few flakes richer now

Twas sunny and a blamy 77 at the arctic circle

Beginning the gravel road.

What do you think of when someone says Arctic Circle?  I think of ice and snow and whiteouts and cold beyond imagination.   How about sunny and 77 F?  It was shirt sleeve weather now, but don't plan on that in the winter! 
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay through Fairbanks and down to Valdez.  There is a gravel road that runs along the pipeline all the way from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, where land ends and the Arctic Ocean begins.  It is known as the Dalton Highway and it is 491 miles from Fairbanks to Deadhorse.  As dirt roads go, its a dandy.  It has quite a reputation as being almost un-drivable.  Still, there is a fair amount of traffic along the road since all the supplies for the oil field and pipeline must go up that way.  Food, prefab housing, lots of fuel, construction equipment and anything else you need for a pipeline.


Shirt sleeve weather at the Arctic Circle, wow!

We had considered going up to Deadhorse, but there are few to no accommodations along the way.  I wasn't going to take the RV up there since I didn't want to tear it up and I could not figure how to drive over 900 miles on a dirt road in one day.  Stories of torn up tires and broken suspensions abound here.
Along the way, the Dalton Highway crosses the Arctic Circle, 66 degrees 33 minutes of latitude.  It is the circle on the earth above which the sun does not set on the summer solstice.  From there north is the land of the midnight sun.  It's only 199 miles from Fairbanks. 

It took 13 hours but we did it.  Along the way were amazing things.  We set out at 8:00 AM with a full tank of gas in the truck.  We drove north to Livengood, AK which is a house and a highway maintenance shed at the end of three miles of dirt road.  No services.  I don't know why it is on the map, but it is.  As we were going down the gravel road to Livengood, we got behind three motorcycles.  When the road ran out and it became apparent that there was no gas to be had, we had a conference with them.  They were unsure of where to go, so I shared the map.  It turns out that they were from Covington, KY!  What a small world.  We traveled together for most of the way. 

Gasoline became an issue.  Some truck drivers  that I talked to at the Dalton Highway Sign said they should have gas at the Yukon River crossing, so I decided that was the turn around point if there was no gas. Even at that point I was sweating the amount of gas we had.  The lower half of the  tank is always smaller that the upper.

Dirt road and trees,  saw a lot of this

The countryside you pass through varies tremendously.  In many places its covered with Birch and Spruce trees like the land further south.  But, as you go north, you find increasingly large areas of no trees and meandering small lakes.  This is arctic tundra in the summer when the surface of the frozen ground has melted for a foot or so.  Underneath is permafrost on north facing slopes but is largely melted on south facing slopes. 
In Alaska they have a plant called Fireweed which grows in the short summer and blooms a pink flower.  We saw whole hillsides covered with it.  Beautiful. So the view out the window varies from tree lined road to wide open views that go for miles.  In the picture above, you can see the road going over a hill in the distance.

Fireweed on road bank.

 There was no rain which meant that there was no mud except where the highway department was spraying water on the road.  Those folks love mud.  Evidently in wet weather, the road can become treacherously slippery.  Potholes abound as does washboard.  I am glad we left the RV behind.  You also learn very quickly to slow way down and move over when vehicles come the other way.  Rocks go flying and your only hope of keeping your windshield is to be going very slow when they hit.





Gasoline at last!  Also lunch

Well, it turns out that The Yukon Crossing was open for business and thriving.  The crossing is a bridge over the Yukon River that also flows past Whitehorse, YT.  Boy had the river changed since then.  There were pictures in the Camp of trucks crossing on an ice bridge before the metal one was built,  THAT IS SCARY!
The most I have ever paid for gas, $5.50 a gallon and your choice was regular.  Glad to buy every gallon.   It turns out that the place is run by very friendly people and has good food.  It is also a bunkhouse for oil line workers.  We had salmon potato soup made with coconut milk.  Amazingly good.  The motorcycle guys show up just as we are leaving.  They had collected a fourth for their drive. They are really slowed down by the gravel patches and deep potholes.



Kentucky Motorcycists

So, we keep on driving.  Another several hours and 60 miles later, we reach the Arctic Circle.  A short time later, the Kentucky motorcycle guys pull in also.  One of them caught the mood very well.  He said "Take another picture of me, I drove 4000 miles to get it!"  There were several groups of people there and you rarely see grown adults having so much fun standing around a big sign. 





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So, a white van full of people pulls up, the people get out and mill around just like we did when we got there.  One guy comes running up with a rolled up rug.  What???  Oh there is no line for the Arctic Circle, so he unrolls the rug in front of the sign.  I got Pat up there for this photo.  It doesn't' get any better.  What does it look like around this part of the Arctic Circle, well here are a couple of pictures:

You can see the highway crossing the picture.

Woods and tundra in the region of the sign

 Not the mental image that I had.  We decided to drive on further to see what it looks like.  At this point we are only 1/3 of the way to the Arctic Ocean and it is 2:00 PM.  An incredible drive indeed.  We went another 16 miles into the Land of the Midnight Sun, hit a bunch of road construction and turned around.  We made it to Gobblers Knob and around OH Shit Corner, famous as a place to loose your load if you are not careful.  Not much changed as far as scenery.   Now for the long drive back.  by this time Pat's arm is tired of being in the truck (I think the rest of her was, too), and I was sick of being bounced around.  That little white Nissan does ride like a truck for sure.  Some time later, we reach Yukon Crossing again in time for dinner.  If its a guy place, the chili must be good, right....wrong.  And the Tums were at the RV.
If you look in the Milepost Alaska Travel book, you see all kinds of red warning text for the log of the Dalton Highway.  Well, it certainly has some amazing grades,   I saw a couple of 3 mile long 8% grades and  a couple of 1/2 mile long 11% grades.  Those end up being third gear (out of 6) trips at 25-30 mph.  So some of the road is paved, some is not.  Some of it is a 60 mph drive and some of it is a 15 mph drive.  In many cases the dirt road was better than the paved parts.

Above are a couple more pictures of the road.  The lower one is a hillside of Fireweed and the upper one shows how far that road goes.  You never think its going to end.  Those of you who know me also know that I have had a life long tendency to go down funky roads to see what's at the end.  Well, for the first time, I was beaten by the Dalton Highway.  We only went a third of the way.

Now for some useless information about the Arctic Circle.  It doesn't stay in one place on the Earth.  The Earth wobbles on its axis as it revolves around the sun, completing one wobble every 41,000 years.  That is known as the Milankovitch cycle after the Serbian climatologist Milutan Milankovitch.  (Yeah, sure, I knew him well.)  That translates to 200 miles of movement.  So in 40000years the arctic circle moves nearly to the Arctic Ocean and down as far as Fairbanks, AK.  However, I won't be around to see it, so a more meaningful measure is 25 feet per year.  Do you think they move the sign?