The Reluctant Tourists

Our last day in Alaska and had we but known.... We queue for our bus mid-morning and drive out of town for a view of the Alaskan pipeline. What an endeavor - it's pretty interesting. Then off to pan for gold. We pull into a parking lot and count 11 other tour buses. Be still my heart, it's going to be rough. We all board a little train with a singing conductor who's shown on a small TV in the front of each train car. The good news? It's rather mild and sunny. A good day to be out-of-doors. More herding when we get to the sluice area where Yukon (that's what I called her since I could never remember her name and still can't) demonstrates the correct panning technique. She is wearing gold pieces too numerous to count with nuggets that have been made into necklaces, rings, you name it. She tells us she loves gold. Doh. Next, we receive our bag of dirt and start to sluice. We all get into it. You don't know what you'll find! Ron is very proficient and I can't get rid of any of my dirt for fear I'll toss out the gold along with it. Ron helps and soon enough my treasure is revealed. Jackie and Larry must get new dirt since their first allottment contains only one or two gold - what shall I call them? - flecks. When the reckoning arrives, Ron and I have $6 each (which they announce but for which they do not pay you) and Jackie and Larry score with almost $30. She gets a pretty locket containing their flakes but I have enough gold for one locket only and, with 2 daughters, I take my flakes and leave. Our bus takes us to downtown Fairbanks for lunch. The staff suggest some eateries, but Larry's spotted a place en route to our stop where the parking lot is full of locals. We walk over there for lunch and amuse ourselves for too long until the bus reappears. Hard to find parking for all the tour buses so they have to move off once we've been unloaded. The afternoon activity is a trip downriver on a paddle boat. If possible, this parking lot contains EVEN MORE tour buses than did the last place. There are 2 gangways onto the boat and literally hundreds of tourists that plan to get on and get a good seat. We have lost heart and let everyone else on first. Still we manage to secure a spot standing outside, and we're off. The boat owners have set up the landing and take off of a sea plane and a stop where we see a sled dog demonstration. If you're on the wrong side of the boat (we were) there's always the TV monitors. Futher down river, they announce that we'll be debarking into a native village for demonstrations by young native women. I can hardly believe that 2,000 people (the boat's capacity) will be getting off and on again. Ron and Larry stay on the boat but Jackie and I brave it. Jackie rebels after the first lecture so we strike out on our own, look around, check out the book store and return, laughing, to the boat. The book store was just that. It contained several copies of one book by the sled dog owner. We were glad to get back to our lodging where we had dinner and went early to our cabins to prepare for departure. Almost unbelievably, we had to present ourselves at the lodge at 4 A.M. for our trip to the airport since our plane was leaving at 6.