Day 7

After heading out Thursday, we had to make three stops in Soldotna: first at the hardware store to buy 3 little pieces of PVC to fix the high-banker; second at McDonald's because we were hungry; and third at the gas station to get gas for the high-banker. We glued the new high-banker pieces together in the back of the campter in the parking lot. Funny thing about that hardware store, we didn't look the least bit out of place in dirty clothes and muddy boots. There were people with more dirt and mud than us in there! Once we got squared away in town, we were off to the Crescent Creek claim.

We scouted sites and picked one to setup on, then lugged the big gear out of the camper and to the site. We needed room in the camper to sleep and it would save us from lugging heavy stuff when we were sleepy in the morning. While we were lugging, Ken noticed a great big Chinook salmon headed upstream. It was really large. We watched it for a while, and then it was joined by a smaller red salmon and what was probably a very large rainbow trout. They were all headed upstream, the two salmon to spawn and the trout probably to eat their eggs. Ken took several photos with his phone and managed to get one uploaded to the blog for you all to see (scroll down to see it). There were a couple of other folks camped out at the claim site, so we said hi and chatted for a while. We dug into our rations for dinner. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches were the order of the night.

Then we set about to prepare the camper for sleeping. Sarah got the bunk, with it's 20 inch clearance. That was entertaining when it came time to close the bunk curtains. It involved a lot of belly crawling and scooching around to get from end to end. Once she was safely on the bunk, Ken set about to arrange things so he could lower the second bed. The camper is sort of a customized one and instead of a table, it has what appears to be an old sliding door attached with hinges along the bench seat. In non-sleeping mode, the door is upright against the wall, blocking the side window. When in sleeping mode, it is unlocked (and untaped since the lock doesn't hold) and opened downward over the bench seat, creating a bed. It even has a piece of carpet attached to it to make it more comfy. Luckily there was also an extra sleeping bag stowed away that Ken could use as padding under his own bag. We set the alarm for 6 and endeavored to sleep. Sarah went right to sleep and stayed that way. Ken didn't have so much luck, but he did get a bit of sleep.

6 AM came WAY too early. Ken staggered outside first, then came back looking for a coffee mug since one of our neighbors had offered him a cup. Sarah managed to get out a little after that, but before Ken was done with his coffee. There was more PB&J for breakfast, then it was off to setup the high-banker. As with all other aspects of this trip, things weren't quite right. It turns out the borrowed pump uses the same female hose connector as the high-banker, meaning we had to have a hose with two male ends. We had no such hose. Ken got a knife, cut the end off a hose, got an extra male connector out of his stash of stuff, and we clamped it on there. That cost us about 30 minutes or so. We got the pump turned on and the line pressurized and a geyser appeared half-way through one of the hoses. We shut off the pump and Sarah held her fingers over the holes (two of them) while Ken hoofed it back to the truck for Gorilla tape. Even with the pump off, there was a geyser and we didn't want the line to completely depressurize. It took a bit of doing to get the tape on the wet hose, but we finally got it on there and we were ready to go.

Remember those buckets of dirt Ken scooped up and took back to pan at the cabin earlier in the week? Well, they never got panned, so they got lugged back down and processed through the high-banker. We setup next to an existing hole that somebody had failed to fill back in (that's sort of a no-no on a shared claim). We switched off dumping dirt in the high-banker and shoveling out of the hole for a while, but then Ken ran the high-banker while Sarah got in the now much larger hole and shoveled. We ran about 8 or 9 buckets through, then took the results up to the truck to pan them (and have some lunch, yes, more PB&J). We found a few pieces of gold in the results. Those of you unfamiliar with gold panning may become excited by that statement. Don't be overly so. A "piece" is generally something too small to pickup with your fingers and requires a little squeeze bottle to suck it out of the pan (like a baby nose snarfer). If you can pick it up with your fingers, it's called a "picker" and those are a little more exciting. We didn't find any of those. It did however start to rain. We headed back down to the high-banker and began shoveling and processing again. We put another 7 or 8 buckets through, and had a random assortment of visitors come see what we were doing. Several of the folks working the claim (or staying there) had never seen a high-banker and were intrigued by it's operation. So they stood around talking and watching us shovel in the rain. We finally wrapped things up about mid-afternoon. Wrapping up is not simple, as the equipment has to be rinsed off and broken down, the now sizable hole has to be filled back up, and everything has to be hauled back to the truck. It was still raining and everything and everyone was soaked. We got everything packed back up in the truck and headed for home.

On the way back, we stopped at the Wash and Dry because they advertise having the cleanest showers in town. We tromped in along with all the other people, paid our $5 each and got our name on the waiting list for a hot shower. We had hot showers! And they had bathrooms with doors that closed and toilets that flushed. There were also smelly hippies, but they appeared to just be doing laundry and not bathing. They really should have been bathing. We also learned while we were there that this part of Alaska set a new record today: 27 consecutive days of rain. The locals are not happy about this weather. Even for Alaska it's bad. No matter. We got hot showers!

Once done, we headed back toward home, with a brief stop at the Kasilof Mercantile for some souvenirs. Once home, we unpacked the truck, got a fire going to try to dry out some of the clothes, and Sarah started packing. Ken got in a Skype call to Collin, Matthew, and Kelly (Jeff and Karen participated too), then learned how to download his photos from this camera and upload them to Facebook. Then it was off to sleep. We have to be up at 6 to get to the airport to deposit Sarah and retrieve Jeff.

Doran Family Trip Part 2 starts Saturday!