As you can see the building is pretty striking but so were the contents. We both liked the giant outhouse
made entirely of recycled materials.
On a more serious note the museum gave a good view of Alaska through the ages mammoths, mastodons and lions.
The lion was particularly impressive, in his day he was a big boy ,standing 6 foot plus at the shoulder.
Many of the bones and fossils on display were found by the miners as they thawed out the ground using giant steam boilers and hydraulic jets. One great example is blue babe, a mummified steppe bison buried then frozen after being killed and partly eaten
The coming of the white man to Alaska was documented from the early Russians to the last great gold rush. The stories of gold mining were made more real today when we toured the private geothermal unit at Chena with the owner of a gold mining operation.
Gold mining can still be a mom and pop operation with mom driving the bulldozer and pop running the seperator.
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Output from the different areas and types of mining operations were on display with something like 50 oz of pure gold on show behind a pane of glass. Once again I wonder why nobody is trying to nick it!
On our way up to Chena we saw several moose,
all seemed quite nonchalant about having their picture taken.
The area is a state recreation park and big no shooting signs were in evidence so I guess the moose feel safe. Alaska breeds pretty literate moose you know!
We also stopped to admire this field of fireweed covering a temporary clearing in the forest. The clearing being the result of a very hot forest fire that hat burned through this area a few years ago.
The fireweed seed lies dormant for many years until the forest burns and triggers their germination, hence their name fireweed or perhaps it is the colour.
We made it up to the resort of Chena Hot Springs and took their geothermal tour. The resort is built around 4 fissures in the earth which release water a t a steady 170 Fahrenheit. Originally they were at the bottom of a cold water creek so the hot water was quickly cooled by mixing with much colder creek. The prospectors who discovered it soon found streams of people coming to cavort in the waters.
We were no different and had a swim as well.
The land was homesteaded and turned into a resort, but for the last 50 years nobody had been able to make any money here, in fact the resort was loosing $800,000 a year when it was repossessed by the bank. The current owner bought it and turned to the hot spring as an energy source. The first effort of piping the water through the cabins offices rooms and greenhouses saved about a third of a million dollars but it his current efforts that interest me and many others in a world where energy costs are going up. When he bought the place they generated their own electricity using oil at a cost of 47cents a KwHr. At todays oil price it would be 80 cents a KwHr. Their geothermal plant produces at 7 cents a KwHr and this will drop to 1 cent when the plant capital cost is paid off next year. The clever thing is their ability to use low grade geothermal energy to turn a turbine. Most other geothermal plants use water above 212 Fahrenheit and allow this to flash to steam and drive a turbine. Chena uses an intermediate step, heating a form of ammonia which boils at a much lower temp. and using that to drive a turbine. They then recycle the water down the borehole to be heated up again.
The next bit is for Little John of LADMAS fame. They also use this boiling ammonia in a unique 3 stage refrigeration plant to cool a giant hanger housing an Ice Hotel with bar and chandeliers.
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