Denali to Nenana, 60 miles, Aug 20, 2010

Well, our drive by of the Nenana RV Park lured us to pull in and spend the night, using the afternoon to explore.

Our first stop was the Visitor Center, where Marge took us under her wing and told us about her town.

She is explaining how Nenana’s claim to fame, the Nenana Ice Classic, works.  It is a lottery where you try and guess when the black and white tripod will move from its position 300’ from shore.  The tripod is planted two feet into the ice of the Tanana River and when the ice breaks up the tripod moves and trips a cable attached to a clock on shore. That is the official time of ice breakup and that time declares the lottery winner or winners if more than one person selected the same time.  Here is an article about last year’s breakup.

Well, here is my ticket with my best guess.  Bob entered too with April 30, 4:32 pm.

As you can see the tripod is large.  Looks like this is the tripod they will be using for the 2011 Ice Classic.  (just love seeing the blue sky and sun)

Just across the street from the above tripod was this century old church, St Marks Church. 

Their alter is decorated with bleached moose hide with traditional Athabascan beading.

  We also visited the Railroad Museum.

This bear trap was huge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Ice Classic is a big thing here as the RR museum had these books stacked in the corner.  Each book lists all the entries from a particular year. We were told there were two cemeteries in the area. We found them both, but this one was very interesting.  It is for the native peoples and is across the river overlooking the town. 

Come sit with me. (Notice the chair.) Very peaceful place.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Nenana.  Tomorrow we have about an hour drive into Fairbanks.