Last summer I touched the Alyeska Pipeline. I didn’t even know it was possible. Alaska Denali Tours made it happen though. My kids and I started in Anchorage, took in the sites and went to the Saturday Market down town. After Anchorage we boarded the Motorcoach and headed to Denali. After a night there, enjoying the sheer vastness of the country, we made it north to Fairbanks, a small town with a large attitude. The Fairbanks North Star Borough, which Fairbanks and Denali both reside in, is roughly the size of New Jersey, but the total population is less than 100,000. That means if you stretched every person in the area out evenly there would only be 11 every square mile. The town was founded around the gold boom, which started in 1902 and still continues today.
The first thing I did while I was in Fairbanks was the Riverboat Discovery tour on the Chena River. I was able to really soak in the heritage of the land. We saw a traditional fish camp and left the boat to learn about the way Native People live in the villages of interior Alaska. After a lunch near the river we headed north to the El Dorado Gold Mine, which has been mining for gold for decades. We took a train, complete with the operator singing us some Johnny Cash, into the mine to learn about the history of the industry. The guides were wonderful and really immersed you into the setting. After the train ride we panned for our own ‘flash’, and even made jewelry out of the flakes. The family who operates the mine was there and we got to touch enormous gold nuggets.
After the gold fever we departed on the train once more and made our way back to the busses. The bus took us up the Dalton Highway to a spot where the pipeline was near the road. My family and I headed right to the exposed pipeline raised five feet off the ground. There was no experience quite like knowing millions of dollars of crude oil was pumping through that enormous structure. We were even given the opportunity to take home parts of retired pipeline. What an adventure!
-Kira Elegy