Riverboat Discovery

We finished out our month of Alaskan Discovery on the Riverboat Discovery that tours up and down the Chena River in Fairbanks. It was amazing! I really had my doubts going into the tour, especially since it was a pretty penny to do but it is worth doing at least once while in the area. First of the gift shop was AMAZING! and huge and it had a dining area with it as well. The insides of the vessels were very well maintained, and found that my kids have reached the age that I am no longer that cool mom. So they chose to sit separately from me but still with in my site.

Well the tour started off with a little introduction to a very prominent means of transportation in the interior of Alaska and that was the plane. We received a demonstration of a bush pilots take off and landing and even got to talk to one for a bit over the radio. It was very interesting.

We then moved further down the Chena and got a little history on the area and the family that created this tour over 3 generations ago. Further down the river we were introduced to another mode of transportation that is popular here in the interior and that is dog sledding!!

This was a great demonstartion on how they work with the dogs year around and how they train them from the time that they are born. It was quite amazing and you could tell the dogs loved to run!

After this we headed further down the river until it met up with the might Tanana River. The largest glacier fed river in North America. It was beautiful.

At this point in time we turned around and I figured that the tour was over but I was so wrong. The next area we stopped at is an area of land that they have set aside to show how the natives and early settlers lived. The only way to get to it is by boat and it was beautiful, almost looked like a rainforest rather than and arctic desert.

They had everything from cabins, smoke houses, old snow mobiles to gardens. It was quite amazing. There was also a place to pet the sled dogs and a monument to Granite, a particular sled dog that had the heart and will of a lion. Along with this they had native guides telling you about their cultures from their fish camps, to fur coats. It was very interesting.

All in all I would love to do this again to catch all the little things I might have missed. It was a very cool introduction to Alaska!