RoadNotes: A Pair of Elks with a River View

Elks Lodge #1551, Fairbanks, AK – June 22 through 29, 2014

After three days of waiting we were finally able to get one of the coveted Elks Lodge river front camp sites. The screen shelter is set up not to combat mosquitoes, but to dry out from the rain on our last day at the North Fork of the Chena boondocking site. A little sun did the trick. Later in the day Nancy, Steve, Mark, Wendy, EJ and I used it as a sun blocker so we could play a game called “Fast Track”.

Since Midnight Sun celebrations were in full swing, we took advantage of one right downtown.

And there was a little sumthin’ for everyone.

This particular festival was well attended. We were disappointed because it was mostly about food and politics and not arts & crafts and music.

The crew had signed up for the Dredge #8 tour. Naturally we used our Toursaver coupon book. It has already paid for itself, so we’re glad we got it.

You’ve been quizzed on this before, but here we go again. Which one is the PIG?

Another view of the Alaska pipe line. Those posts on either side of the pipe have cooling fins on top. The posts contain a refrigerant that helps to cool the ground surrounding the posts so that it doesn’t thaw the permafrost. Thawing the permafrost would throw the pipe line out of kilter and really screw things up.

This was our “Don’t mess with me!” conductor. Actually he was a guitar player and signer who preformed a nice tribute to Johnny Cash.

Some of the sights on the way to the dredge and gold panning.

The Dredge #8. We’ve explained how dredges work in earlier posts so we won’t bore you with the details again. This one required an enormous amount of water that was provided by the Davidson Ditch. More on that later.

Frank got to play with the controls. I don’t think anybody got hurt.

But of course the big attraction was the gold panning. EJ was anxious to try it and Frank was very ambivalent about it. Kinda like gambling, you may as well through your money on the floor and walk away. This is what you start with. A little pile of dirt.

Steve and Frank getting ready to swirl the pans.

Wait! Is that a speck of gold? By golly, it looks like several specks. Frank ended up with the most out of our group.

Goldpanners assayers say it was worth $71. Yeah, right! We later found out the dirt with a few gold sprinkles comes from the lower 48. But still, the thrill of finding some gold specs was fun. It would be interesting to have it assayed by someone not associated with the attraction. Oh, and when I offered to sell them my gold for what they said it was worth, they weren’t interested. Imagine that!

EJ asked how come I couldn’t find a nugget this big.

On a new day, we decided to explore downtime some more now that the Midnight Sun craziness had died down. We start at The Diner for breakfast.

Lend – Lease program statue. The US lent planes to Russia. We ferried them to Alaska, Russia flew them across the Bering Straight.

Indigenous People statue.

EJ stops to smell some flowers.

Whew, all that walking has worked up a pretty good thirst. Time to stop for some coffee.

No, it’s not a soufflé. It’s a cup of coffee (latte dah!).

The rest of the crew has headed to Denali to camp in the wilderness. We have reservations to go also, but we think spending 9 days in Denali would be too much of a good thing. On the advice of James at the National Park Service office at the visitor center, we decide to explore north east of Fairbanks instead.

One of our goals on this trip is to explore areas we haven’t seen and to indulge in some activities we bypassed last time. With that in mind we decide to travel the Steese Highway between Fox and Circle, Alaska.

Our first stop on the Steese is some property owned by one of the Native tribes. They will even let anyone gold pan in the creek. But there rules make it pretty clear they don’t want any serious gold retrieval operations going on. Here is a group that has gathered for the day to try their luck.

Then we find the old Chanaka Gold camp which unfortunately is no longer in business. It even had a hotel.

Soon we come across the Chatanika Lodge. Frank wanted to check this out because they have a ‘56 Thunderbird in the lobby complete with James Dean, Elvis and Marilyn cut outs.

Their other claim to fame is that their property contains the remains of another huge gold dredge. But over the years, fire has destroyed it and only the skeleton remains. Turns out it was a nice hike to get to it.

A little further up the highway we turn down a narrow road to find the Davidson Ditch. This project consists of both ditches and pipes that act as siphons to move the water down and up the hills on the way to Fox. Where the land was relatively flat they dug a ditch to transport the water. Altogether, the Davidson ditch is 90 miles long. Construction of the ditch in the 1920’s utilized 6 power shovels, 3 diesel and 3 steam. The steam shovels were originally used in the construction of the Panama Canal.

Along the road to the pipe EJ spies a pile of moose droppings and laments that this is as close to a moose as she is going to get. Up to this point we’ve seen no moose.

At last we reach our destination, Twelvemile summit. Although the highway continues another 70 miles or so, we decide to end our journey here and spend a few hours hiking and having lunch.

The trail is over frozen tundra and consists of a series of 2 x 8s laid end to end. Some of them sturdy and some pretty much rotted away. This makes for an interesting balancing act.

In the above picture, see the little spec of rocks to the right. That is our destination.

Along the way EJ spots plenty of small flowers.

As we finally approached the top of the hill, they trail began to veer away from our intended destination. The wind died down and the mosquitoes started to attack with a vengeance. We hurried back to the car for some lunch.

On our last day in Fairbanks we decided to take a side trip to Ester, another old mining town. The little community has evolved over the years into a bedroom suburb of Fairbanks proper. There is still some gold mining going on, but it is all on private property so we couldn’t get in to see it. But we found this neat house and a stilt structure. Apparently someone wanted a better view.