Fairbanks, AK post 1 of 16
June 22, 2018 post 1 of 16
This was our view on final approach to Fairbanks. We flew in from O'Hare:
Our first excursion was a riverboat tour on the Tanana River, past Susan Butcher's home. She died in 2006 of leukemia at age 51.
Her daughter continues to work the Trail Breakers Kennel, just outside Fairbanks, and she does a demo for the tour boat. She has a mic and talks to the crowd as the captain holds the boat steady in the river.
That's her at the helm of the ATV just coming back to the Kennel from a demonstration run:
As a part of the tour "show", a local pilot taxis up the river, then takes off beside the boat. A common sight in Alaska:
The big draw of the tour, however, was the fish camp. I've posted some of these pictures already on Facebook. Chena Village is a re-creation/restoration of a traditional summer village, common among Athabaskan first nation people, who were somewhat nomadic. Here's a diagram of the grounds:
Here's the actual camp, inhabited over the summer specifically to harvest as much salmon as possible. There's the fish wheel in the river, a couple of tents, a drying rack, and the smokehouse:
Chief Silas's cabin:
Of course there would have to be indigenous animal pelts, stretched in the same way they would have been for centuries:
There were also displays of first nation handiwork:
And the show-stopper ceremonial cloak:
And last, but not least... I'm not sure but what this might have been a later addition, but I've never seen a "pusher" snow machine... and that's what they are called in Alaska, not "snowmobiles":
This was our view on final approach to Fairbanks. We flew in from O'Hare:
Our first excursion was a riverboat tour on the Tanana River, past Susan Butcher's home. She died in 2006 of leukemia at age 51.
 |
| Susan Butcher was a four-time
winner of sled-dog racing’s biggest event, the Iditarod. She was found
to have leukemia in December.
Credit
Paul A. Souders/Corbis, 1991 |
Her daughter continues to work the Trail Breakers Kennel, just outside Fairbanks, and she does a demo for the tour boat. She has a mic and talks to the crowd as the captain holds the boat steady in the river.
That's her at the helm of the ATV just coming back to the Kennel from a demonstration run:
As a part of the tour "show", a local pilot taxis up the river, then takes off beside the boat. A common sight in Alaska:
The big draw of the tour, however, was the fish camp. I've posted some of these pictures already on Facebook. Chena Village is a re-creation/restoration of a traditional summer village, common among Athabaskan first nation people, who were somewhat nomadic. Here's a diagram of the grounds:
Here's the actual camp, inhabited over the summer specifically to harvest as much salmon as possible. There's the fish wheel in the river, a couple of tents, a drying rack, and the smokehouse:
One of our guides displaying a recently-filleted salmon. You can see her at the right in the picture above. All parts of the fish were used, and still are:
The smokehouse holds just a few more:
This is actually a rustic refrigerator...sticks, then fillets, then sticks, and so on. The ground helps to cool and preserve the fish:
Here's the post office, replete with sod roof and a statue of Granite, Susan Butcher's beloved lead dog:
Chief Silas's cabin:
Of course there would have to be indigenous animal pelts, stretched in the same way they would have been for centuries:
There were also displays of first nation handiwork:
And the show-stopper ceremonial cloak:
It is amazing, with such a short growing season, that anything comes to bloom, but indeed it does:
And last, but not least... I'm not sure but what this might have been a later addition, but I've never seen a "pusher" snow machine... and that's what they are called in Alaska, not "snowmobiles":
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