We pan for gold in Fairbanks.

With some trepidation (we’ve already seen or toured a couple of gold dredges) we take the tour of the El Dorado Gold Mine, operated by the same family that runs the Chena River tours (see 8/2/2012 post). 

We enter the gold mine area by crossing under a working section of the Alaska oil pipeline, the more modern gold in these parts.  A pretend mining train takes us on a tour of the operation.  The “conductor” in a front car plays a guitar and sings Johnny Cash songs and provides commentary, broadcast clearly to large-screen monitors in each car.   From the train we view demonstrations of various mining techniques, including a steam (fake steam?) operated drift mining operation.  People in miner outfits stand on a gold dredge abandoned in 1959 and explain its former operation, and provide lessons in gold panning that we later use in another area.  Some call it Disney-ish and it is, but these are real people providing good information, not animatronic versions with corny dialogue.

Sign across the street from the pipeline.

From the C&M Murray Lode.

 Visitors then leave the train and are given gold pans and a chance to sluice for gold.  The poke has not been salted but has been previously picked of any major nuggets.  The weighing, of course, is in a large gift shop and you are encouraged to buy a necklace to hold your fortune.   We recover $35 worth of flakes, others find less; one couple pans $65 worth and spends over $100 on a nice necklace to hold it.  No, I don’t think the operators will buy your flakes back at these prices  We buy nothing but consume huge quantities of coffee, hot chocolate, and cookies that leave me satisfied but sluggish for the afternoon.  I should not be left unattended around free chocolate chip cookies.

I use some spare time to walk through the old gold dredge, which unlike the Parks Canada dredge in Dawson City is still full of old equipment and smells and therefore feels more real.

Afterwards several of us drive mostly blindly trying to find a brewpub we think is in or near the town of Fox.  We abandon that thought after about thirteen miles of driving and head to a roadhouse a local recommends, high in the hills.  All is well and we have a great time.   In the trees outside can be seen another huge abandoned gold dredge, and the roadhouse owner thoughtfully puts an old documentary on the TV VCR showing the dredge’s operation.  We are pretty full of dredges at this point but the old film turns out to be quite interesting.

Larry isn't sure how this happened, but he wants out.

A fine roadhouse across from an abandoned dredge.

Linda makes her mark.

Martha, Reggie, Linda, Steve, Lynn, Cam, Marcia, Larry (still not recovered from the airplane encounter).