All That Glitters IS Gold!

Welcome, September! We began the new month early with another one of Russ' beloved wake up calls. After he turned the lights on and told us to rise and shine, he took a load of luggage up to CJ. Upon returning to the room, he found the lights out and people back in bed. Outraged, he yelled "Come on you guys! You went back to sleep on me!?!" At this point 2 strangers leapt out of bed, very confused and scared. Russ had burst in on the wrong room! Immediately noticing his mistake, he closed the door and came down to our room. We heard the guys outside walking around looking for their apparent burglar, but they gave up the search pretty quick. Katie and I were up and ready to go and shared a good laugh once Russ had conveyed his story. After creeping up the stairs in order to not arouse anyone again we loaded CJ and headed for Fairbanks. We were going north for the day to partake in a real touristy jaunt of the city. The trip up to was about 2 hours from Denali. I took my usual spot behind the wheel, but for some reason I was extremely cold. Russ and Katie were both sweating and peeling off clothing while I was still virtually shivering. I must of still had a chill from yesterdays rafting that I just couldn't shake. I had to pull off to the side of the road and let Russ drive because I was feeling so bad. Immediately, I took a nap and I just knew that I would soon have my picture taken and never hear the end of it, but the photo never came. We stopped at McDonald's and got some breakfast and coffee which really helped me feel better. The first stop on the trip was at the El Dorado Gold Mine for a tour and some gold panning. Just before we got to the mine we noticed a small

stretch of the Alaskan Pipeline that had about 5 tour busses and droves of people outside looking at the pipeline. We thought of this as an unfortunate prelude to our day, knowing that all those busses were headed for the mining company and indeed the tour that we were going on. We arrived before them and there was about 10 other people waiting besides us. They allowed us to load onto the train before the tour busses arrived and the conductor, an old lounge folk singer whose claim to fame is that he opened up for Johnny Cash once, sang us old

Johnny Horton songs like "North to Alaska" as well as some Johnny Cash. In my opinion he was pretty good and I am glad that we got to arrive a little early while he played. Sure enough, all the busses pulled in behind us and filled up the train. We took off for a short tour and then came back to the gold mine where we got to do some panning of our own. They explained the processes real well and had some great demonstrations, but all we were focused on was starting our own gold panning. They finally gave us our bags of pay dirt and we headed over to the trough to start. It was really fun and though each time the water rushed out of your pan with some dirt in it, you worried that the gold was going too, but in the end, gravity won out and there was gold at the bottom of each of our pans! We had our findings priced out and we ended up totaling $72 worth of gold between

the 3 of us. It was a real high and left you wanting

more gold. Its easy to see how everyone got sucked into gold rush fever, we pretty much had been, and we collected nothing but some scraps. We had some time to spend before our next tourist adventure so we decided to make a trip the North Pole! North Pole Alaska that is. The town is covered in candy cane lamp posts and bus stops, street names like, Santa Claus Lane and St. Nicholas Drive and comes equipped with a reindeer stable, a gift shop, and the worlds largest Santa statue. Santa himself was in the gift shop waiting to be talked to and photographed. We took some pictures and walked around a bit before getting trapped by a seemingly very lonely Santa who just talked and talked. Mrs. Claus must have been gone for a while because this guy just latched on to you and told you everything he could, ensuring he never stopped to breathe so that you couldn't get a word in. Once he finally slowed down enough for us to tell him we had to go, we left the North Pole and

headed back to Fairbanks for the Riverboat Discovery Tour. This tour was again very touristy,

but pretty fun and informative. We went by a dog sled kennel that was the former home of the late Iditarod Champion Susan Butcher and watched as the dogs pulled a makeshift sled around a course at about 20 mph. After we visited an authentic Athabascan village where we learned about their culture and lifestyle. Again it was very touristy but alas, there are

a lot of things that you just can't experience unless you are part of a tour. After the boat docked back at shore, we headed to our third Alaskan Salmon Bake for dinner. This one was an

outdoor buffet that served up prime rib, wood smoked salmon, and deep fried halibut and cod. Keep in mind that all these "Salmon Bakes" that we have visited are completely different entities, unrelated to each other in every way, save name. We still haven't figured out why

this name is so common... maybe it just draws tourist in so they all pick that name, it sure worked on us. Anyway, Katie being the pseudo vegetarian and fish hater that she is, was not impressed by the menu to say the least. She didn't want Russ spending $30 on a buffet that she knew she wouldn't eat. So she waited while we ate our food and sipped on beer to curb her appetite then we headed to Silver Gulch Company for her dinner. This is the

northernmost brewery in North America! We spent about an hour here while Katie finished her meal. Afterwards we began the trek back to Denali and the Crows Nest. All day we had had clear sky and there was a buzz around Fairbanks as everyone was talking about the northern lights tonight since it had been the first clear night in a while. As we drove back to Denali, I kept looking for a spot that would be good for pulling off the road and viewing them tonight. We found a few spots and recored their mileposts. We went to bed but set our alarms for 1 a.m. in order to wake up and take a chance on seeing the northern lights, probably the only time we would be able to. Katie and I woke with relative ease and managed to get out without waking Russ who wasn't too interested in waking up at 1 a.m. We headed down the road and once we got out of the city we began to see them on the horizon. They were a very faint green color and never got to be very impressive, but both Katie and I can now say that we have seen the northern lights in Alaska. We aren't giving up complete hope yet, and hopefully we will see them in full action once before we leave.