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/
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| Starr is waiting to board! |
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| Back 3/4 shot |
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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! |
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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.
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| Coming in for a smooth landing. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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.
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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.
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| We had lunch in downtown Fairbanks, the ribs were so-so |
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| visited the Alaskan pipeline, was a very short stop, didn't get to read all the information they had posted. Drill baby drill |
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| The pipeline was sagging, I was taking my job very seriously, Starr was trying to tickle me! |
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| Starr had to try save it also! |
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| 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!
