Alaska - Our first full day as part of the group (Part 1)

After the Arctic Circle flight yesterday, we attended the first official event of the cruise tour - a welcome/orientation dinner. This was held in a banquet room at the Princess Fairbanks Lodge with everyone together at shared tables. It was a multi course catered meal so your only choice was whether or not to eat what they brought out. Wine was flowing freely however. We met our guide who would stay with us the entire trek until the ship and she went over all of the paperwork and planned activities. It was nice to meet everyone officially and mingle with the people I'd be spending the next 8 days with covering the state of Alaska. And yes, I was the youngest in the group by at least 10 years but that's fine by me. By the end of the trip, I would jokingly dub myself the mascot of the group.

After breakfast at the lodge, we all met up this morning for our first included port excursion. All of these excursions were organized by and purchased from Princess. It was a bit of trouble and confusion when we wanted to reserve the optional tours from each lodge because at least at the time, it didn't let you book land tours on the cruise personalizer like you can for cruise port tours. We had to call Princess and have them do it for us over the phone. Today would be a full day tour known as Riverboat Discovery Cruise & Gold Dredge 8 Combo for which Princess currently charges $159.95. For those not on the Connoisseur tour where this was included, you can also book each part separately. The Riverboat Discovery Cruise is $89.95 and the Gold Dredge 8 is priced at $60.

Our first stop via motorcoach on the way to our excursion was to visit the Alyeska Pipeline up close and personal. This is included as part of the Gold Dredge 8 portion of the tour but there were stops later in the trip that would have not necessarily been included if you weren't on this type of cruise tour package. I think you have to be part of a scheduled tour to be this close but it still surprised me at how we were just able to walk up and touch the pipeline.

For the informational sign lovers:

My Alaska, what big pipes you have!

For reference, I'm 5'7" and I was barely taller than the platform underneath the pipe's platform. Note the nametag pouch hanging around my neck. While we didn't have sea pass or cruise cards for identification like on the ship, we had these nametag pouches to wear. These were a little bigger than ACL gave us so you could also fit in a folded up brochure or map.

The pin affixed to my nametag pouch strap was given to us for being part of the tour group:

Hey this pipeline has legs!

Partially, this stop was to occupy us until the Gold Dredge facility was ready for us. Several different groups were there today doing tours so they had to stagger us. When they were finally ready, this gentleman picked a high perch to address the crowd:

We next all boarded a trolley train to take a narrated ride over to the pavilion set up with troughs for gold panning. Each trolley car had TV screens so you could see and hear what the driver was saying. He even stopped driving at one point to perform a song:

Much like you might expect from a low budget ride at Disneyland, there were stations set up along the train/trolley route where the employees showed what it's like for someone who worked at the mine.

Just before we got to the pavilion, they showed us a demonstration in front of each trolley car on how to do the gold panning.

As we reached the storefront (what you thought there wouldn't be a gift shop?) , our narrator concluded his story by talking about how friendly the local townsfolk would be when you came to town often coming out to cheer and wave. On cue, several employees came out of the store toting all the little sacks of gold infused dirt to hand us as we got off the trolley.

After getting our little bags of dirt that were all guaranteed to have some amount of gold in them, we were directed to a pavilion filled with multiple troughs of water surrounded by long benches. Each spot to sit had a pan and an old film canister. You dump a little bit of the dirt from your bag into the pan, dip the edge of the pan under the water, and slosh it around a bit before emptying out the water back into the trough. The heavier dirt sinks to the side and the small pieces of gold will stick to the bottom of your pan. There are employees walking around helping if you have any questions. A couple of us had to get new bags because we ended up missing the tiny gold pieces with what we dipped back into the water. These were free but if you wanted another bag just to do the experience again or try for more gold, those were an extra cost. 

Next step was to take your finished product to be weighed in the shop. It was nice to see that they had a whole row of scales and employees helping keep this part of the process moving through quickly.

They'd ask you to guess how much your gold haul weigh was worth and my guy was impressed that I guessed $20 and it turned out to be $24 worth. Kind of surprised considering to look at the contents was barely flecks on the bottom of the film canister. There was a leaderboard mounted on the wall with the top earners. 

You can choose to simply take the canister and its contents back home for nothing more than the cost of the tour, as we did, or pay extra to turn it into jewelry. 

They had an example of a gold nugget worth $75,000 out on the counter that you could hold and pose for pictures with.