Fairbanks June 14, 2010

Birthday greetings to Sandy back in Baltimore!



We awoke to a brilliant sunny day. In the morning we went to the University of Alaska's Museum of the North. The Alaska Territorial Legislature included a museum in the charter for the University of Alaska in 1917, making the museum part of the university system from the very beginning. The museum offered its first exhibit in 1929 - a collection of entnographic and paleotological material collected by local naturalist Otto Geist along with the University's small collection of paintings. Over the years, the museum collections grew. Today, the museum is the repository for artifacts and specimens collected in Alaska and a leader in northern natural and cultural history research. The Gallery of Alaska includes award-winning exhibits that give visitors and introduction to this cast and diverse state. Exhibits focus on the cultures, wildlife, geography and history of each of Alaska's five major geographic regions. Highlights include the largest public display of gold, videos on the aurora, extensive displays of native culture, and Blue Babe, the world's only mummified Ice Age steppe bison mummy. (Note: I took a lot of this information directly from the museum's brochure...credit where credit is due).

This afternoon we boarded with Discovery III, a paddle boat, to tour the Chena River. The paddle boats have been a staple of river life for more than 100 years. They acted as tug boats to guide barges filled with essential cargo to the residents. Today residents can get their Amazon orders within 24 hours. Decades ago it would take up to 2 years to receive something ordered from the "outside" world. The cruise lasted about three hours. We observed a staged take off and landing of a pontoon/bush airplane and visited an iditarod dog kennel. We cruised to the Tenana River which historically was the largest glacier river in the world. With the changing climate it's flow has been substantially reduced. Then stopped by a re-created Chena Village (think of Williamsburg on a MUCH smaller scale and focused on the native alaksan way of life dating back 12,000 years). It was fascinating and very well done.

We've met many people who are doing their tour in opposite direction as we are (they did the cruise and are now completing their land tour). We leave on Tuesday morning at 7A to catch the train to Denali. We have two days in Denali and two days at Mt. McKinley before heading south to Whittier to catch the curise ship on the 19th.

That's all for today. I am going to figure out how to get this photo posting to work!