While in Fairbanks, we went on a Discovery Boat Tour. It was the largest paddle boat I ever went on. It was three stories and it was so neat to have a bunch of little tours or demonstrations while on the boat. We had a floater plane demonstrate taking off and landing in the water and on a sandbar. I'm amazed at the sandbar one because it wasn't very long sand bar. Then we saw domesticated reindeer and they talked about them. Then Jess's favorite, I'm guessing, was the dog sled demonstration. As you can see from the picture they let the dogs go swimming after they demonstrated a dog sled mush with a Honda. They showed three puppies and they were so cute. The woman who presented is competing in the Iditarod. She also gave a later talk and demonstration at the Athabascan camp. This was my favorite. We had three to four different demonstrations about the Athabascan culture. One on sewing. A beautiful parkee made from muskrat. I have to say Myra's parkee, made by Gram (Myra's Gram), is just as beautiful. There is a lot more beading it seems in the Athabascan culture, but I could be wrong. Then they talked about the different shelters the Athabascan's used. One was made with skins, evergreens, and bark. They also demonstrated how a fish wheel worked. The Inupiaq didn't use fish wheels. At least that is what someone told me. Again, I'm not 100 % sure. It was fun to try their secret recipe of smoked salmon (cedar chips and brown sugar) in a salmon spread. I went back for more than seconds! The 2nd picture is of a food cache. The Athabascans and Inupiaq use these to store their food they hunted or gathered: a great way to keep bears away, refridgeration, and as you can tell the shelters were not that big and the cabins were not either to make sure it heated it up nice.
Almost done with Alaska Trip then get ready to read about something new!
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