Thursday 1st

"Today is our last day on the Princess Land portion of our trip, we had two tours today. In the morning we went out to Gold Dredge 8 and in the afternoon on a Paddlewheeler.

Gold Dredge 8 operated from 1928 to 1959. It represented the hallmark of gold mining engineering and provided a boom of economic activity for thr Fairbanks area when it operated. The dredge was shut down for "clean up" every two weeks for a few hours to recover the gold from the sluice boxes. An average cleanup yielded about 4000 ounces of gold. 

When we arrived they took us on a small replica train ride to the dredge, this highlighted the way gold was mined before the dredge arrived.

We did some gold panning, between both of us we got about $15 worth of gold, we have it as a souvenir.

The Alaskan oil pipeline passes close by, the pipeline runs for 800km from Prodhoe Bay to Valdez.

This is the dumb pig that they run through the pipeline to clean it, it travels at about 3 miles per hour. They also have a smart pig which is computerised, one thing it does it continually measures the thickness of the pipe and sends this information back to a central control room. The pipe is 48" (1.2m) in diameter.

We then travelled to the Discovery Centre where we had lunch, it was then onto the Paddlewheeler "Discovery 3" for  trip up the river.

This was one of the sleds that Sally Bitrchner used to win the Iditarod.

There are some nice houses up the river.

We passed the house of Sally Butcher and saw a demonstration on Sled dogs, very similar to the one we saw in Denali. 

We then went to a replica native village where we were told of their customs and lifestyle.

Tonight we had a farewell dinner with all the land participants and the it was wait and see for the Northern Lights.