2024 August 06, Tuesday - Alaskan Cruise - Fairbanks

Tuesday, Aug 06, found us boarding a motor coach and heading down the road just a few miles to the authentic river paddleboat Discovery III on the Chena River. Authentic from the standpoint that the propulsion comes from the functional paddle wheel, Its not just decorative, I was pretty impressed! I was imagining riverboat gamblers doing their card playing way back during the gold rush days! There was a few interactions with people on the bank of the river via two way radio. I thoroughly enjoyed the outing, it was very informative and educational! 

https://www.riverboatdiscovery.com/

Starr is waiting to board!

Back 3/4 shot

No riverboat is complete without the paddle wheel!!
🎶 The paddle on the boat goes round and round, round and round, round and round!🎶
Now you have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day! LoL!

OH NOOO Starr, their leaving without us!!
She's so sweet, she makes me feel so tall! 

Okay, down to interaction business!!

The first interaction was with a bush pilot with a Piper Cub doing some take offs and landings. Unfortunately, the take off pictures just didn't pan out. The pilot explained the vital roles that these planes play in the Alaskan wilderness.. One of his comments was 1 out of every 80 Alaskans is a licensed pilot, it's highest per capita in the US. 

Coming in for a smooth landing.

Take off, Just B4 he left the water was the coolest

The second interaction was with Trail Breaker Kennel. Dave Butcher shared stories of his late wife, Susan Butcher, a four-time Iditarod champion. I believe she moved to Alaska from the east coast to train sled dogs and to race in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. They also said she was laughed at, who ever heard of a woman in a dog sled race, she showed them! Her husband & daughter now run the kennel.

Hitching the dogs up to a modified ATV (Motor is removed). Dave said this way he has half a chance of stopping them with the braking system. He also said he has to anchor the the back end of the ATV until he is ready to go, the dogs are that excited to take off and PULL!

And they're off! It was beautiful watching the dog do what they love doing, RUNNING!

And they're back! I think it was a 1 mile run they did (around the lake in the background), and they DID NOT want to stop! They finally got them unharnessed and let them cool off in the river! If my memory is correct, I think it was in the high 80's that day, they were hot!

We reached the point where the Chena flowed into the Tanana River. I'm really going to be digging in the memory banks on this one! I believe the narrator said the Tanana is glacier fed and there's so much silt and minerals in the water the sand bars are constantly changing. I guess in the gold rush days they could take the paddle boats up the river mostly by watching the currents.

The point where the two rivers meet, note all the sand bars

After turning the paddleboat around (they did modify it by adding side thrusters) the third and final interaction was with the Chena Village Living Museum.

This was taken from the upper deck of the paddleboat.
The gal narrating (upper right) is a Athabascan native, the indigenous people of the area. She was explaining how they smoked salmon.
The buildings in the background from L2R:
1. The tent would be a typical winter trapline tent. 2. The open frame with the canvas on top is where they would hang the salmon to dry B4 it was smoked. 3. The enclosed building was the actual smokehouse. 4. The small building on stilts is the cache, where they would store food items to keep safe from critters! 
The mechanism in the foreground is a salmon catcher.

The salmon catcher used the river current to rotate the wheel. It has two baskets 180° from each other, and perpendicular to those, two paddles, 180°. the river would rotate the wheel, the baskets would scoop the salmon up as they swam upriver to spawn. as the baskets with the salmon got to the top of the rotation, they would fall into a chute and slide down into a basket. 

Here they were explaining different furs that were trapped and stored in the cache. 

A couple of temporary shelters used

Birchbark canoe, snowshoes and closer view of the temporary shelter

Starr coming out of a prospector's tent.

This I found this fascinating for some odd reason. They found these two bull moose, dead in the river with their horns locked together (Typical males thinking with their.... oh nevermind). They were salvaged and made into the mount below!

ohh ohh baby, look at me!

Our new Alaskan home!
Just kidding, another sample of early Alaskan living.

Alaska brown bear, this is another mount.
We did see a real Brown bear while we there thru a spotting scope. It was across the bay from where were standing. 

Just a peaceful ride up the Chena river

Just a peaceful ride up the Chena river

Just a peaceful ride up the Chena river

The Belle of the paddleboat!

Just a peaceful ride up the Chena river

And to wind up the paddleboat ride, I had a reindeer sausage, it was quite tastily!

We had lunch in downtown Fairbanks, the ribs were so-so

visited the Alaskan pipeline, was a very short stop, didn't get to read all the information they had posted. Drill baby drill

The pipeline was sagging, I was taking my job very seriously, Starr was trying to tickle me!

Starr had to try save it also!

That evening we had something akin to a dinner theater. The play was sort of a melodrama of how Fairbanks got started.

It was busy day, they had us hopping from from the moment we got up!

First full day is a wrap!

2024 August 05, Monday - Alaskan Cruise - And away we go!!!

5:02 AM, ugg, way toooo early! BUT, we're bright eyed & bushy tailed (so to speak) and ready to go! - (The blob off my right shoulder was a young lady I decided needed to be blanked out)

We choose to do a five day land cruise before boarding the ship in Seward, AL on Friday, Aug 9th. We flew into Fairbanks, but to do that we had a connecting flight in Seattle, WA with a 2-1/2 hour layover, then onto Fairbanks. I think the plane left MSP around 7 AM, but by the time we got to Fairbanks and 3 time zones, I think it was around 3ish. It was a long day!

One of the many glaciers we flew over between Seattle & Fairbanks.

Whatttt? yet another glacier!!!

One last one before I move on!

I think, not sure, this could be Mt Denali, formally Mt McKinley!
This was about 15min before landing in Fairbanks!
More on that in another posting!

We landed.... finally! Pikes Landing was the placed we stayed for two nights, it was an very nice place!

They even had a reindeer and grizzel bears outside our back door, albeit they were statues, that counts, right?

In our room, a tired and grateful Starr.
I think we went to bed pretty early (Alaska time) that night

 

!!BANG!! And a couple of scratches on our rig!!

 On January 6th, 2023 around 2:30 in the afternoon we were returning to the mainland of Florida after spending 4 glorious nights down in the Florida Keys, sightseeing all the islands down to Key West. We were just entering the southern outskirts of Homestead Florida, a southern suburb of Miami, heading to our next SOWER project in Steward, FL. We were coming up to an intersection as the light turned yellow, thinking I had plenty of time to breeze thru it before it turned red I continued on. I was mistakened. According to two witnesses, the light was red when I entered the intersection (in my mind, I still disagree). I broadsided (T-boned) a car going thru the intersection which in turn, sideswiped a car across the intersection. The speed limit was 45mph, the momentum was enough that when I hit the car, it spun the truck around 180 degrees forcing the passenger side to hit the side of the trailer effectively tipping trailer over. The fifth wheel hitch was ripped out the box of the truck, which is quite a feat when you consider it's bolted to the frame of the truck. I do not remember seeing the car, I remember hearing a "BANG", I remember seeing a white flash (I think it was the airbag), I remember thinking "What the...". Then it was over. The truck was saying over and over "You were in an accident, 911 has been called...". The back of the truck was against the signals pole. Starr was shouting "it's on fire, get out" (turns out it was the smoke from the airbags) and "I lost my phone, I can't find my phone" (We did find it). Starr did lose on of her hearing aids, never did find it. There was a fire truck, ambulance type vehicle across the street at a convenience store that saw the whole thing (one of the witnesses) they rushed over and had us sit down inside and made sure we we alright. I had no cuts or bruises, Starr had the seatbelt bruise thing going on (across the waist and up between the boobs to her shoulder). Fortunately, there was no one on the sidewalk. The man in the car broke a tooth and possibly a bloody nose, the car he hit the gals had no injury's. God was watching over us, none died, no one was carted off in an ambulance. Big Red & Boo (our trailer) both were totaled. Still working thru some of that. We recovered close to 90% of our stuff. We had more or less just bought groceries, so the refrigerator was full, we no place to to put it.

The final resting spot

Driver' side

Tool box in the back of the truck

Boo sitting in the impound lot. Whenever we came to clear our stuff out they had put a forklift under the front end to keep it stable, that's how damaged it was. They would not let me on the roof to get the solar panels because of the unstableness.
If you look real close, you can still see the hitch is still on the trailer.

Freezer, Note my box of ice cream bars, upper right corner!!

And the fridge! That thing must have stunk to high heaven by the time it got picked up!

Location Check-in: Niagara Falls, NY

 

We are at Niagara Falls, NY! And, of course, The falls themselves!

I was pretty impressed with the falls!

Staying at KOA Lewiston, NY, a little north of the Falls!

Rode the trolley around Goat Island, that actually splits the two falls.

American Falls in the forefront, Horseshoe Falls in the background

View from the Canadian side, we walked across the Rainbow bridge!
We were suppose to have our passports with us besides ours Drivers License, they let us in, but not without a "lecture"!

Heading back to the USA

American side, to walk to Canada

Entrance to the park!