Riverboat Discovery

While riding in the tour boat, we got to stop and watch lots of 'Alaskan' happenings. One of these was a float plane taking off and landing beside the riverboat.
Another thing we did was stop and talk with Susan Butcher's husband who raises sled dogs. Susan Butcher was one of Alaska's favorite women, the first to win the Iditarod. She died last year of cancer. It was a treat to get to listen to her husband explain what they do with the dogs and to get some great pictures of him and his dogs. It was interesting how the riverboat tours did this. They pulled up next to these things and had microphones set up so that the guests could speak into the microphone and all the passengers on the riverboat could hear what was being said. Pretty cool.
Here they are getting ready to run the dogs. It is summer so they run them with a 4-wheeler.
After the dogs work, they play! As soon as they unhooked them from the run, the ran into the river.
Another really neat part of the riverboat cruise was the confluence of these two rivers. Taken from the Riverboat Discovery website: Nuchalawoya, an Athabascan Indian term for the "wedding of the rivers." The marriage of the clear waters of the Chena River and the silt laden Tanana River creates this unique demarcation line.