Wednesday, June 9, 2010

We left Fairbanks today. We really had a good time here. On the way we passed Ester which started as a tent cam[p of miners in 1906 and then became a large scale gold dredging operation by 1936 until 1956. It reopened in 1958 as a summer resort.
The town of Nenana was called Tortella by the miners trying to pronounce the Indian name of "Toghottele". It's an Athabascan word that means "a good place to camp between the rivers". It was a trading town for the Natives and travelers. Now it is the hub for tug boats and barges taking goods to the interior towns. The Nenana Ice Classic has been going on since 1917 when the men in a bar bet money on when the ice on the river would break to start it flowing again in the spring. It has been going on every year for 95 years and the money goes to all who chose that exact minute. Last year the winners shared $279,030. The payoff is made in June. The river freezes over by October and November and is 42" thick by April 1st. The ice melts on the top due to the weather, and on the bottom from the water flow. The tripod that marks the exact minute it flows is placed 2 feet into the river between the highway bridge and the railroad bridge 300 feet from shore and is connected to a clock that stops as the ice goes out.
Denali National Park is a little different from Yellowstone. You cannot drive into the park, but you can walk anywhere you want in there. You can also camp in there, but you have to hike your camping stuff in on foot. They have asphalt trails for quite a ways. There are some parts that have no trails at all. We walked to the train depot- 2 miles last night. I had some trouble breathing which is probably due to the cottonwood trees blooming and blowing all over the place. The only wild life we saw were 2 squirrels!