$75,000 In My Hand.

Fairbanks, Alaska
River's Edge RV Park

Our reservations for the Gold Dredge 8 were at 1:45 so we decided to visit the North Pole this morning.  

Santa said his knees were in good shape.

I think Santa has been drinking too much cookies and milk. 

 Harry and Carlena look like midgets next to Santa.  

Santa insisted we tell him what we want for Christmas.  He did tell Bill, that he needs to be good.

It was fun, but nothing like the huge store in Frankenmuth, Michigan.  







Harry cruised around trying to find a place for lunch.  The only place we could find was Cold Stone Creamery for lunch.  Ed Allard would be proud that we got dessert before lunch.  Life is short.

Our tickets were ready for us and we used our buy one get one free admission coupon.  It was another gorgeous day with temperatures expected to reach in the 80's.

One thing  on my bucket list was the oil pipeline.  I had no idea that the Gold Dredge 8 tour included that when we reserved it.  

James Bond came to mind when I saw this.  I can't remember which one featured the pipeline.

It's much larger than you think.  I heard on TV that it could be considered an eighth wonder of the world.

Carlena and I are really enjoying the sun and the fact that we didn't have to wear long pants and long sleeves.

I knew Bill would take a picture of this sign.  







Tammi had called yesterday to say that her and Bob, and Sandy and Ed were coming today.

It was nice meeting up with Loosey Goosey members again.

Then we had another surprise, when John and Sue showed up. 

Lucky for us, someone offered to take our picture and I said there were ten of us.  

The train stopped to show us about gold mining in the early days of Fairbanks.  This gold dredge is a historical site.

Everyone was given a bag of dirt with rocks and gold pans were set out with a container for our gold.

Harry and Bill have gold panned before, but I hadn't tried it.  

Here's Bill's pan with gold.  We were given a small bottle to put our gold in.  They had scales and told us what the value was.  Our total was $48.00. 

I decided to have my gold and Bill's made into earrings.

It was fun watching how they placed the gold in the earrings.  

We didn't find a nugget as large as this one that is valued at $75,000 and weighed 19 ounces.  
We were allowed to pick it up.

There were cookies, hot chocolate, coffee and tea provided for everyone.  I highly recommend this tour if you are in Fairbanks.

Turtle Safely.........