Thursday March 6, 2008

Alaska

Iditarod Update – Thursday Night

DeeDee Jonrowe is number one, however, the real leaders are on their twenty-four-hour break.  Our guide, Jessie Royer, is also on her twenty-four-hour, which puts her behind those who have not yet taken their break.  She is twenty-eighth on the current leader board.

An interesting note from the Iditarod website

CRIPPLE – Checkers huddled around the inflatable palm trees set up as a joke at this remote tent camp on Wolf Kill Slough were expecting Paul Gebhard as dawn broke this morning.  Instead, they heard a woman’s voice chirping across the snow-covered swamp speckled with black spruce. 

It was DeeDee Jonrowe, and nobody was more surprised than she to be the winner of the GCI Dorothy Page Halfway award, which comes with $3,000 in gold nuggets.  A stunned Jonrowe reportedly was thrilled, saying today was her husband, Mike’s birthday and she hadn’t  gotten him a gift yet.  The gold would do fine.

Iditarod Update – Friday Morning

The real leaders are beginning to show, as Lance Mackey, Jeff King, and Rick Swenson are off their twenty-four-hour break.

These yaks were enjoying the excess water from the past two days of rain.

We saw several long rows of mailboxes – indicating there were many homes in some of the roads that led into wilderness.

Our destination this day was Eldorado Gold Mine.

After buying our tickets for the short train ride through and around the mine, we enjoyed being entertained by the conductor.

He told stories, sang, and played several instruments until the train was ready to leave.

Dexter Clark, a gold miner, and interesting commentator, explained how gold is mined and panned.

Then it was our turn.  Everyone was given a little bag of dirt – to which a small amount of gold had been added.

Cerwin’s pan of dirt.

This is what was left in our two pans – $20.00 worth of gold.

We had it put into a small pin.

Later that day we went on a riverboat ride – in the Fairbanks area.  (This was the same riverboat where we met Jessie Royer, the musher we enjoy following in the Iditarod.)

Dixie, an Athabascan, woman was along the riverbank, and explained how to filet fish.  She had that fish ready for frying before I would have picked up the knife!

Later, when we left the riverboat and visited the village, this young girl showed us examples of Dixie’s beading.  Some of her beading is on display at the Smithsonian.

There were a lot of interesting houses in the Athabascan village that was set up to inform tourists how these Alaskans hunted and lived.

After leaving the Fairbanks area and heading south, we stopped at the Knotty Shop – an interesting tourist stop.