July 6 - Riverboat Discovery in Fairbanks

Our adventure today was a ride on the Riverboat Discovery, a paddle wheel steamboat .  Jim made a friend last summer while he was in Mongolia who had lived in Fairbanks for several years.  She really loved the Discovery and said that she always took friends who came to town there.

The boat dock was just a few blocks from our motel and we got there early-ish.   That put us second on the boat with a full choice of seats.  Jim dragged us up to the top deck where we had a clear view in almost every direction.  We watched huge numbers of people pouring out of tour buses and into the boat.

The boat is the third incarnation of the Discovery, each getting larger to accommodate more people.  This one holds well over a thousand people and was about 2/3rds full.    The current pilot Wade,  is the grandson of the founder.  A granddaughter Madi, who was  working on  board will have her full captain’s license next year.  Another grandson was doing the video for the trip.  The widow of the founder had helped with the development of the business in many ways, including building of the first tour boat.   Her job now is to come to the shoreline of her home, dressed to the nines and wave to folks like us twice a day. She also narrates the seniors tours.

Original Discovery

We passed by several homes with planes in their yards.  There was a very small landing strip, but most planes were equipped to be float planes.

Other riverfront homes ranged from elegant to fun.

 One of the local pilots did a takeoff and landing for us along with commentary about flying.  A guy who does radio did a marvelous commentary for the entire boat tour.  The audio system was great and they often had very clear conversations with people on the shore.

The most well known and winningest driver in the Iditarod dog sled race was Susan Butcher.  She was also the first female in the race.  She died of leukemia a few years ago.  Her husband, Dave Monson still runs the Trail Breaker Kennel where they raise dogs and train them to be sled dogs.  The kennels were just a bit down river from the dock.  When we got there, we watched two 3 week old puppies being trained.  They were put into the water to learn that their handlers wouldn’t push them to do more than they were able to accomplish.  They were also teaching them to climb over logs.

They had a team of dogs tethered to an all terrain vehicle that had reinforced brakes and no engine.  On command, they flew off and went for a very fast run.  The other dogs in the kennel became very animated, wishing they could be doing the pulling.

In the last year of her life, Susan, with some help from Dave wrote a book about her dog racing experiences, focusing on the dog Granite, the runt of her litter.  Susan nursed Granite back from cancer, despites the vet’s advice, and Granite went on to lead 4 Iditarod championships.

We continued down the Chena River to where it flowed into the very large Tanana River.  It wasn’t safe to enter it since it was filled with logs and the sandbars had recently shifted.

We pulled up alongside a piece of property owned by the boat company.  A boy from the local tribe who had just graduated from high school told us about going to fish camp with his grandfather and how they used fish wheels to catch salmon.  He then gave a demonstration of dressing and drying a fish.

Fish wheel

 Some large animals came into an enclosure next to the shore.  The girl explaining them asked “what is the difference between reindeer and caribou.  Her first answer was “reindeer fly”.  Her proper answer is that reindeer are domesticated caribou.

We then disembarked and split into two groups.  Each went to a separate outdoor auditorium, eventually rotating to 3 different sites.   

At our first site, a young female from a different tribe told us about the large animals that live in the area, showing us various pelts. 

In an efficient manner, they got the roughly 400 of us to move to the next seating area.  The guy who told us about fish camp and the gal who talked about animals combined to teach us about various types of early housing.

One more mass move, this time to the place where the two young folks explained traditional costumes.

We then had about a half hour to explore things on our own.  The best place was the sled dog area.  A young woman who was with Dave’s kennels answered questions about the dogs.  She expects to be driving a team in the 2013 Iditarod.  The young dogs ran around a big enclosure, sometimes stopping to greet tourists.

They had a garden showing the effects of 24 hours of sunlight.  The cabbage was especially impressive.  We saw elsewhere, that an Alaskan cabbage last year grew to over 120 pounds.

On our way back, we saw a river otter slipping over a log in the river.  He was only visible  for a few seconds.  Jim was lucky to have been scanning the area with his camera.

To help prevent problems, the riverboat company traps logs that are floating down the river, then releases them after the afternoon boat returns to dock.  They only have 2 sailings a day.

We had lunch at the Pump House Restaurant, a place we had seen from our boat trip.  It had been part of the mining effort up the adjacent Cripple Creek.  They used a lot of old equipment in the place’s decor.  We ate outdoors where Ardith had a big burger and Jim a chicken BBQ sandwich.  The food was good, but not exceptional.