This morning we rose and headed back to Crow Creek. It's become increasingly important to try and give Tom some say in what we do. He is feeling a bit put upon, since most of the time the adults tell him where we are going next for his enjoyment, not expecting any reluctance. I think his ill temper has a lot to do with this. Despite the fact that everything we are doing is meant to be enjoyable, we are packing a lot in and there is often not a lot of room for debate.
Crow Creek was historically an active gold mine, but has now become a tourist attraction. There are several original mine buildings, and a path to the creek where visitors can pan for gold. On entry we were given a shovel, a pan, and a lesson in how to pan, as well as a small sample containing gold with which to practice. I am sure that many visitors, like us, lose even the small amount of gold in this packet without perfecting the panning technique. After about 40 minutes of fruitless panning, much of it in standing in a heavy downpour, we decided to leave. At the time I could not decide whether this was a quaint historical document being kept alive by dedicated enthusiasts, or whether there was a very clever marketing ploy, playing on people's instinctive desire to 'strike it rich'. Shane assured me that he knew the people who owned it, that his brother had been married there, and it was indeed a genuine landmark. The sight of a family of gold-diggers, returning from the creek with their generator, pumps and highly advanced filtering equipment also vouched for it's genuineness, if not the historical side.
There are more pictures here.
In the evening we headed to Tina and Jake's for a family barbecue, where we met several new members of Ryan's family, and sampled his efforts to grill salmon on cedar planks and a large prime rib of beef - not bad at all, Ryan ! I took Tom away for a while, as his mood had not improved. We went to Barnes and Noble to look for his summer reading books, but when we got back food was served, Frisbees came out and Tom had a thoroughly good time before we dragged him away, at what appeared to be an all-too-early hour.
In fact we have been thrown several times by the 'midnight sun' here in Alaska, even though we were warned about it. It's not the brightness in the night sky that is the problem. Soon after midnight, the sky gets dark and overcast - not truly night, but with the duskiness in the sky and quietness in the street you can tell it's late. No, the problem is the evening, when the light in the sky does not change from 4pm in the afternoon till after 11 o'clock and there is no sensation of time progressing. Often we have got up from our evening meal ready for the next activity, only to find that it is after 10.30pm and certainly time for Tom to be in bed. Alaskans (like Bob and Mary) are obviously disciplined about this, and get themselves off to bed at 'normal' times. Not for the first time, it is after 1am before Linda and I settle down.
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