There be gold in them there hills....

Hi Blog!

On Thursday, May 26, 2016, we had a chance to hike around Rancheria Lodge and RV Park. The property is huge. In addition to the lodge, motel and campground, part of the property is being mined. They also have their own water turbine power plant. As big fans of Gold Rush, Bering Straight Gold and Alaska Gold Diggers, it was fun to poke around all the gold mining equipment. Unfortunately, we couldn't visit the active site for safety reasons. However, there are a number of abandoned sites just waiting exploration.

We started our hike along the Alcan until we found this rather inviting woods road. We followed it all the way back to the Rancheria River. We saw lots of hoof prints and scat, but weren't able to spot any cariboo, moose or bear.

We came back to Alcan and worked our way further down until we found this dry creek bed. It was just asking to be hiked, so we followed it down to a rock beach where we ate our picnic lunch.

With all the recent rain, the river was running fast and furious.

We noticed the cliffs across the highway have a basalt cap. As the cliff erodes, the basalt tumbles down making a very dramatic cliff face.

Here is Dave next to the sign fore Canyon Creek.

The creek passes right under the highway in huge culverts.

They are so large that Dave actually walked through it.

Here is the electric turbine. Water is diverted from the creek, passes through the turbine and comes out back to the creek.

We followed an old road back until into the canyon. We soon reached the site of an old gold mine operation. Here the creek was dammed so water could be diverted down this old sluice.

As much as we would have liked to continue hiking up the canyon, the pond and recent rains made it impossible to continue.

We followed the tumbling creek back down toward the Alcan.

The walk back was just a pleasant stroll along the edge of the forest. Every once in a while, we would wave at the passing RVs as they made their way toward Alaska.

As with many of our outings, we are never sure what we will find, but we always manage to find something.