On Sunday, we bummed around town and decided to check out the Pioneer Park. We thought it was going to be the typical tourist trap, but it turned out to be a pretty cool place. They had a railroad museum, an aircraft museum, a riverboat docked there, and a local history museum, plus a lot of gift shops of course.
A little diorama showing what an early, simple gold mine looked like. They dug a shaft into the permafrost to get down to where the gold was at. All the way down, they built fires in the hole to melt the frozen ground, then dug and hoisted it out.
And lots of flowers.....
A neat old steamshovel.
We decided to try some more gold panning on Monday. We drove about 20 miles northeast of town to Pedro Creek, where a guy named Felix Pedro discovered gold in 1902 and started the Fairbanks area gold rush. We were so busy panning for about 5 or 6 hours that we forgot to take pictures. All we had to show though were a couple of flakes of gold. Should have known that a place open to the public for panning wouldn't pay off very good. We had fun again though. Panning really is back-breaking work.
After dinner, we drove just north of town to the Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station. They have caribou and musk ox on display there and we thought it would probably be our only chance to see a musk ox. Pretty cool critters....well except for all that hair!
The caribou were in fenced areas at the back of the facility. They give tours here 3 days a week, but not of a day we didn't have something planned.
Tomorrow is our big trip up the Dalton Highway, or the "Haul Road", to at least the Arctic Circle, maybe further.
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