After doing the dome, a few of us went out and panned for gold. In that we went to a commercial panning place and did it there. They also sold supplies and introductory classes for people who wanted to seriously go out and pan...there were people looking for gold all up and down the river... It wasn't easy to do, hence the classes. But it was fun.

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So. Dawson. We were so excited to be in Dawson. We were hoping to find some where that might have documentation of anything about Great Uncle Fred and Harry and Great Aunt Lucy. But first, we had a day of touring planned. One thing that Dawson has is a Dome. Big thing, high, you drive up to the top of it and look down on the town. So we drove to ( Read more... )

Today I thought I would take a minute to talk about our Granddaughter Lia. I have to say, this kid blows me away time and again. Her birthday was September 16. She turned 3 years old, and for some days prior there was excitement, and planning, and promises of parties and people coming to visit HER. (For example: Grandma and Grandpa!) She was going ( Read more... )

Hi again. Day 11. We left Fairbanks at 7:30 in the morning. LOTS of ground to cover. We stopped at the North Pole and went shopping. Yuri was (probably rightfully so) openly derisive of the place, declaring it a fraud, not the real Alaska, nor educational. However, it was pretty and had some cute souvenir thingys that we got and then due to the ( Read more... )

Today we headed out for Dawson City in the Yukon Territory. We went through the North Pole and did some shopping there, we drove through Chicken, and we drove over the Top of the World Highway ( Read more... )

From Healy, we drove to Fairbanks and saw the Alaska Museum...a really wonderful museum that EVERYONE on the tour had been to but us, so "the kids" (us) wandered around the building looking at stuff and the rest of the group sat in the cafeteria and had coffee and rolls and visited.

This place was great. We like museums.

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This was day 10, of the trip. July 30, 2015. We went back to Denali the next morning. (Did I mention we were staying in Healy?) We went on an actual hike today. We went with the ranger who was very fun, and we got to operate telemetry equipment, and see Moose tracks (FRESH moose tracks, the ranger had been over the trail the hour before we got ( Read more... )

Denali Park ( Read more... )

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

I will make a longer story of it though.

We took the bus through the park to the Eielson Visitor Center. This was not the shortest tour, nor was it the longest tour. It was just right.


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Well, there we were near Willow. We turned off the highway onto a gravel road and headed into the brush. Almost immediately we saw a cow moose standing in the middle of the road. She quickly moved off into the thickets ( Read more... )