sashakat

In the morning it was off to a working gold mine, the El Dorado for a tour and some more gold panning. Everyone was guaranteed to find gold (if you didn’t find at least 8 flakes they gave you some). Tony found the most in his pay dirt but I only found a small amount. We combined our huge find and took it to the weigh station for valuation. Our combined gold totalled $17.50 - WOW that should help with the retirement funds....hehehe. I gathered the flakes and had them mounted inside a gold locket on sale for $59 – I’m sure they make a lot more money from this than from any gold they find at this mine. There was a gold nugget on display (I forget what it weighed) that was valued at $60,000 ... read more

This morning we went on a Natural History Tour through Denali National Park. We spotted a female moose with her calf way off in the distance but it was yet another fleeting glimpse. We visited the ranger station at the park and then went on to see an old mining cottage. Our first real close-up view of wildlife was a porcupine crossing the road in front of our bus. Porcupines, it seems, are quite blind so it was not surprising to see it cross right in front of us. Luckily our driver was alert enough not to run over it as it sauntered across and then into the bushes before disappearing up a tree.....managed to get a photo or 2 this time. We met and Athabascan native named Susan who gave us an informative talk about ... read more

Happy Birthday Tony !!! We arrived in the morning at 5:00am so it was much too early to check-in to our hotel. However, we hailed a taxi and went there anyway to drop off our luggage and then went off in search of somewhere to have breakfast. Well, it is early Sunday morning and it is Alaska so no one, I mean no one gets up that early here, not to mentioned having to open shops or restaurants. So we walked around and around and around until eventually we found a little cafe down by the train depot which was actually open. There were 3 police cars parked outside so this could mean one of two things – something shonky was going down or it was the place where the police had their breakfast. Lucky for ... read more

Caught early morning flight to Hilo on Hawaii's Big Island for our tour of Volcano National Park. We to a sweet factory and watched workers making biscuits coated in dried squid and dipped in chocolate (the Asians love it apparently), then went to a macadamia nut factory only to have them explain that their macadamia nuts came from Queensland – ho hum. We finally went to see the volcano lava fields and craters - never got to see any magma or lava lake (although it was definitely there) but we did get to walk over a 20 yr old lava flow which was pretty amazing. We visited the main caldera Kīlauea and saw it’s huge 2 mile wide crater and a smaller crater within it which was spewing sulphur from deep within its belly – lucky ... read more

The day has finally arrived and we are sitting in the Qantas Lounge waiting for our flight down to Sydney and then on to Honolulu. It's really cold today in Brisbane so it's been a good opportunity to get aclimatised to the weather we will have in the next few weeks. Our first stop is Hawaii and the temperature there is supposedly like a Brisbane Spring day - not as hot as we thought it was going to be. We will have 3 days there before heading north to Alaska (I seem to remember an old song with that title...hehehehe) for 11 days and, after that, to the Canadian Rockies for a further 10 days. Oh yeah, it feels quite strange to me at the moment cause I'm typing this up on a MAC....hmmmm it's kinda ... read more