We are here until July 19 in various cities. We spent our first 5 nights in Tok, Alaska (pronounced Toke). There is not much there, the town hosts about 2600 people. About 2 hours away is the Top of the World Highway. That highway has limited access because it goes to and along the top of a mountain range. We decided to take it to a little junction city called Chicken. Check out my video:
After Tok, we traveled to Fairbanks. Not far from Fairbanks is the little village called
Yes, boys and girls, North Pole, Alaska does exist! It is 10 miles from our RV park and about 10 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska. We are staying at Riverview RV Park for about 2 weeks because we can. A lot of people are only staying for up to 4 days here only because they have to rush back out to the next place (usually Denali and then on to Anchorage). We figured we can hang around a little longer and "cool our jets." There is a lot to do here. There is Pioneer Park, a bunch of museums and so forth. Our neighbors next door typed us up an itinerary! That was very nice of them! They even included where to get my hair done (how did they know???) Anyhow, they both earn a little extra cash helping out the tour bus crowd downtown by giving them great places to go around here in Fairbanks. Hmm? Maybe I can do that one day and earn some yarn money? We shall see.....
One touristy thing I did was go gold panning with my travel buddy Melissa. We met in Whitehorse. She is from Houston, and she is traveling with her dog Tilly. We visited a gold dredge (called Gold Dredge 8) which was in commission until 1964. It was shut down because of EPA regulations. It produced over $1MIL in gold from 1934 to 1964. Not bad for a little place in Alaska!
So it was fun to take a train ride, walk around a gold dredge, learn how they got the gold out, and pan for gold.
my pile of dirt; any gold in there??
add water and swirl
There's gold in that pan!!
All of those specks yielded 3 grams, which was about $18. Melissa only got about $6 worth. But it was a lot of fun. We got free cookies and hot cocoa/coffee, so you can't go wrong with that! It was a 3 hour tour, as far as the total package, so all in all it was a good day.
They also told us about the pipeline, which runs in front of the area where you hop on the train. It runs 380 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the place where we picked up the train outside of Fairbanks, and then another 420 miles to the port at Valdez. Money was no object, so by the time the pipeline was finished in 1976, it cost $8 BILLION. Wow! But it puts out about 700K barrels of oil per day. That's pretty good. When it comes out of the ground, it is 110*F; by the time it finishes its run to the port, it is about 40*F.
Every 6 days, they run these things through it, called a PIG. I don't know if it's a moniker for something, the guide didn't say (it probably stands for something). And every so often they run a SmartPIG (with digital instruments to check for leaks or damage in the pipe). The PIG goes through and cleans out paraffin, a by-product of petroleum. It is propelled by the petroleum. Who knew? As long as they don't put whistling pigs through it, we're okay 😆
We will be doing other things here in Fairbanks; as I said, lots of things to do. I will keep you posted.
😉
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