Day 49

July 17, 2017

Drove outside Fairbanks to the Gold Dredge #8, a huge structure built by Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania, dismantled and shipped to San Francisco, put together again, dismantled again and loaded on a barge, offloaded in Alaska, placed on a train requiring 144 rail cars and shipped to the interior of Alaska in the Tanana Valley , offloaded and re-assembled to extract millions of dollars worth of gold over the years.  It is now designated a National Historic Site.

We boarded a narrow-gauge rail car 

to take us from the entry to the dredge.

We were entertained along the way by Earl who had been Don Ho’s steel guitar player in Hawaii for many years.

where we were handed a sack of “dirt” upon arrival (a bag of dirt and small gravel taken from the creek) and we were shown how to pan for gold.

Our gold strike amounted to $33 worth of gold according to the assayer office that offered to put it into a locket for only $125.  We declined so now we have $33 of gold flakes to carry around.  

There was the usual gift shop available for everything from t-shirts to fine jewelry.  Back at the station we walked under an elevated section of the Alyeska Pipeline 

still carrying black gold from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez after 40 years.  We were given a presentation about the construction of pipeline and the Prudhoe Bay development.  Nothing new for Bob as he had been involved from 1975 to 1978 when we lived in Anchorage.  We drove back to Fairbanks where we fixed a very late lunch in the Unity, had a nap, watched some Tv and were in bed by 9 PM.  But a fun day!