Fairbanks ~ Here long enough to be a resident?

 

Helen is getting taller! The cabin is low to heat

It was Wednesday morning nearly 7 am Alaska time, but 11 am Eastern time. I had planned to conduct the Berlin Water Works monthly noon meeting just outside the Pioneer Park. They have excellent free WiFi. The previous morning, I had Skype my grandson, Sawyer, with excellent results. This morning the WiFi was on, but there server was not on. Plan “B” go to McDonalds about a block away. I was able to secure the only electric plug in the seating area. (I didn’t know if my laptop battery would last for the entire meeting.) I made contact, but again a problem arose. All McDonalds that have a drive through have free WiFi. The thing that they don’t tell you is when their drive-up is busy the signal goes down below the quality that is required for video. Plan “C” I conducted the meeting with audio only.

Interesting fact ~Steam Shovel came here (for gold mining)
after building Panama Canal!

The commitment behind me, we went looking for Dredge #8 just out of town. Dredge #8 is a real gold dredge that made a lot of people rich back in the day. We got there around 10:15am and the sign said that the next tour was going to be at 2pm. This place has to be a destination sight because the parking lot was full of cruise line buses. There is a train that picks up tourist and runs around the site. The Alaska pipeline runs by the parking lot. We took a couple of pictures and headed back to town.

The trip back to town wasn’t a total lost. We stopped at the Carlile truck yard. This is the company that is featured on History Channel “Ice Road Truckers” I know they have 1000 trucks in the State of Alaska, but we only saw a dozen or so in the yard. This is a good thing for them. They don’t make money sitting in the yard.

Water Cannon used in gold mining

We also found another Wal-Mart and started to stock up for our isolation camping experience deep inside Denali National Park. To recap the rules; Minimum stay three days, one drive in and one drive out (The shuttle bus is available but a sixty mile round trip for a quart of milk is rough).

Todays' Gold ~ Alaska Pipe Line!

This evening we stayed in Pioneer Park, a big three day event is starting. Native artisans were on hand with their crafts. I was able to talk to the artisans & get their inside stories of how they learned there crafts. We walked around & got to ride the train around the park. We also called Meg back in Berlin, NH and sang happy birthday from Fairbanks, Alaska.

That is what we did and saw