Alaska
Koyukuk
To be frank, I've never heard of Koyukuk before, but it's at about the right distance for not running out of gas. So that's where we're going.
We'll be following the Tenana River on and off for most of this flight, and also, coincidentally, the Iditarod route for 2015 and 2017 when there wasn't enough snow to run the race from Anchorage, 300 miles to the south.
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Manley hot springs. An Iditarod checkpoint of course, but known mostly for when 13% of its population was murdered.
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Joining up with the Yukon river now. We could have floated here from Dawson.
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Tanana, "Where the Area Has Been Chopped". Like much of the rest of Alaska, it is in a reality TV show.
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I have no idea what would make all of those ancient oxbows but I think that's neat.
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Galena. The Koyukan Athabascan people have had fishing camps around here forever. They would float down the river on rafts and fish for Salmon. That sounds like a great way to spend your summers. When Europeans came here they weren't after fish so much as lead, possibly for sinkers. The mineral galena is the mineral form of lead sulfide and is used to produce lead, and, oddly, silver. It is the tenth most dangerous mineral on Earth, after pyrite but before cinnabar. Now you know. Oh yeah, they mine lead around here. I guess I implied that but never actually stated it.
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Neat river.
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Here's Koyukuk, population 90. Used to be a telegraph station but we know what happened to those guys. Anyway, time to find a hotel for the night. See you tomorrow!
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