Hanging around Fairbanks.....

We decided to stay here at River’s  Edge CG until it’s time to meet Lisa and Wayne, Linda and Chase in Denali.  The sites are a little crowded, but, all in all, it’s a pretty nice place.  It’s clean, and right on the river.  We spend a lot of time sitting by the river, reading, and watching what floats by.  There was one of those joke boat races upstream yesterday, one of the requirements was that any boat entered had to be put together with duct tape….last night, remains of some of the boats came floating by.  We had intended to go see the race, but forgot about it until it was too late.  Also, we saw two young fellows with a “Huckleberry Finn” kind of raft (on oil barrels) come floating down.  They seemed to be having a great time, along wih their dog.  Another home built boat came by, powered by paddle wheels that were mounted on either end of an automobile rear axle, probably powered by the same auto engine.  He wasn’t going very fast, but getting there!

We drove up to the northern part of the Fairbanks area on Friday and did some gold panning.  None of us expected to find any gold (did see some gold flecks), but after awhile, everything looks suspiciously like gold.  It was a great outing on a creek about 25 miles back on a BLM road.  We just enjoyed the sun, waded in the river, and picked some blueberries.  Downside was that the whole area had suffered a huge forest fire last year, and was in terrible condition.  Thousands of acres of trees totally destroyed.

Don and Sharron, Bill and Barbara left here yesterday to head down toward Anchorage.  We’ll try to catch up with them after we leave Denali, somewhere down in that area, maybe on down in the Kenai Peninsula.  I just hope our cell phones are working so we can be in contact with them.  I told Don that if we lose touch, to call Linda at the office week after next and let her know where they are.  Bill and Barbara are getting the ferry on the sixth of August, so they will have to head over to Haines about August 2nd, so we may miss them.

My River Bend WIFI just came up, so I’m going to close out and post this.  After Wednesday we’re probably going to be without access (at Denali).