Peaks & Parks

By: Samie

Travel Dates: July 13th-25th, 2025

Day 10

(River Boat Cruise)

The morning of Day 10 somehow brought us to the last full day of our Alaskan adventure. While our flight back home was looming in the distance, it wasn’t about to prevent us from making the most of the day!

We got to wake up one more time in Denali. It was a drizzly and cloudy day, which meant we had to bid our last chance of seeing Mount Denali in the distance goodbye. It is only visible about 10-30% of the time, and we were not fortunate enough to be a part of the “30% club”. Fortunately, Denali National Park is still beautiful on the cloudiest days.

We hopped onto a bus that would be taking us to our last big excursion of the trip. Along the way, we got to stop at Tatlanika Trading Company Giftshop & RV Park, located along the Parks Highway between Denali National Park and Fairbanks.

This little area has a gift shop, snacks, coffee, and restrooms, as well as mining equipment displays and even a beautifully landscaped flower and vegetable garden. It was a very nice little stop and a great break to stretch our legs before the last approximately 2.5 hours left of driving before arriving at our Riverboat Discovery destination!

The first part of our Riverboat Discovery tour was lunch! We were scheduled to arrive for lunch at 1:00pm, and we were pretty much exactly on time. We were one of the first groups ushered in to eat, so we were seated all the way toward the back of the hall. The hall was filled with large community tables and benches that all the different tours and bus loads were squeezed into.

We had a set menu of Hearly Miner’s Beef Stew, Rustic Roasted Vegetables, Apple Pecan Salad, and a German Chocolate Brownie. The stew was described as tender beef, delicious vegetables, fresh herbs + red wine slow-cooked in a flavorful roux prepared daily from scratch. The rustic vegetables were a mix of different root vegetables and spices. The apple pecan salad was kale and romaine hearts that was tossed in a light homemade apple cider vinaigrette and featured candied pecans, fresh apples, dried cranberries, and goat cheese. There was also sides of bread with butter and honey. It was a very delicious and filling meal!

Because we were one of the first groups to eat, we were also one of the first to finish. The river boat wasn’t set to depart until 2:00pm, and it was about 1:20 by the time we were finishing up. However, there was plenty to walk around while we waited. Most of it was merchandise inside a large gift shop, but there was also a 40 Below Room where you could experience the effects of extreme cold that Fairbanks can endure in winter. However, living in northern South Dakota, we experience plenty of cold winters of our own, so we didn’t feel the need to experience it here.

Susan Butcher, an Iditarod legend, founded Trail Breaker Kennel, which was a point of interest during the riverboat tour, so they had some promotion of that around as well. They had a sign post of the Iditarod race finish line with a cutout of Susan and a couple of her sled dogs as well as a prop sled. They had several copies of the book she and her husband wrote called Granite, a book about one of her most well-known sled dogs. They also had lots of little stuffed Huskies to choose from. We didn’t commit to any purchases during this time, but we would be back.

2:00 rolled around before we knew it, and a line was quickly forming to board the boat, so we hopped in it. Even though the line was long, we were boarding around 1:50. Most of the bottom levels of the boat had already filled up or were filling up fast, so we kept climbing and found some really great seats up on the top. We weren’t in an enclosed area, but it was a beautiful day, sop we didn’t mind!

To kick things off, there were serving coffee and blueberry donuts, so we already had smiles plastered on our faces before even starting to cruise down the Chena River!

Before departing, all the land staff gathered on the deck and waved us off. Well, most of them waved. One braver young man decided to send us off with an impressively long handstand.

Immediately after setting sail, the views were immaculate! Everything was so lush and green. We also had a great guide posted up on our deck level to do some narration. Like all the other tour guides and narrators up to this point, he did a fantastic job. He was funny and knowledgeable, which can definitely make the difference for tours and experiences.

Within the first half hour of our boat tour, we got to see a sea plane take off and land twice. We passed several houses, some of which had interesting history that our narrator shared with us that I absolutely cannot recall on my own. Many of the residents know the boat times and were sitting out on their decks or lawns in their chairs ready to share big smiles and waves!

At half an hour in, we came across Trail Breaker Kennel! You could hear the dogs barking with excitement as we made our slow approach. Most of them were bouncing in their enclosures, but in preparation for our arrival, a few were already hooked up at the front of the property, ready to give us another summer sled dog demonstration.

It wasn’t time to disembark yet, but the boat stopped so that we could pause to watch the demonstration. They also had a few puppies out, trotting and flopping about, demanding our attention if we hadn’t offered it up already.

We then watched as the dogs that were hooked up pulled the musher (Susan Butcher’s daughter, Tekla, whom we would meet in person later) on a four wheeler around a loop of the property. After the demonstration, we waved goodbye to the dogs and kennel, for now, and continued on our way.

We sailed past some of the first signs that we were approaching the Chena Village, such as some of the first dog houses and caches.

As we came even closer to docking at the village for a while, we got to see a demonstration of how salmon is cut and prepared as well as a small herd of reindeer come running out to graze at the shore’s edge for us to see.

Even from where we were, still securely on the boat, we could see how large, especially one in particular, the reindeer were! Even though these reindeer were clearly more domesticated, it gave us a good idea of what a wild and large herd of these creatures might look like!

Before we knew it, we were pulling up to dock at this living museum and starting to make our way down the levels of the boat and off the walkway.

The first part of our time in the village was guided. We had a few designated stops. We were split into a few different groups so that we could make the stops in smaller groups and still get to see everything while also giving the staff a time to present without people coming in and out.

We got to see things like a closer encounter with the reindeer, a look at some of the Athabaskan fashion, and some of the pelts and caches over time.

After the presented parts, we had time to explore the village on our own! Tekla had hopped on a boat with a staff member and a dog or two to meet us at the village. She set up at the village post office where she was selling and signing copies of her parents’ Granite book, so I wanted to start there! We grabbed a book and got in line. I got to talk to her a little bit and shared that I was grabbing a book for my 2nd grade classroom, and she talked about the book was great for kids. She dedicated it to “Mrs. Bergjord’s 2nd Grade Class” and signed it with the year 2025 at the bottom. It was probably the souvenir I ended up being most excited about taking home!

We got to see a statue of Granite nearby as well. Granite was a very shy and scrawny sled dog and even faced illness while training to race, so no one thought he would be able to amount to a lead sled dog. However, Susan saw his potential and never gave up on him, and he ended up leading her to victory several times, as she became a four-time Iditarod winner, and Granite was with her for all. He ended up living to be 17 and a half years old!

We made our way over to village dog enclosure, where a couple of pooches were making their rounds to greet everyone and receive a few back scratches. It was very easy to get lost in the time with cute dogs involved. However, we didn’t know if getting our spots back was guaranteed, and we didn’t want to have to fight the crowds for them, so we started making our way back through the village to get back on the boat.

While our exact row had already been occupied by the time we got there, we were able to still sit in pretty much the same place, just a row or two up. We were seated early enough to watch the straggling part of the crowd make their way back to the boat. Despite a cloudy morning in Denali, it ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day in Fairbanks, so we would have been content to just sit in the sun and people watch for the afternoon!

However, we had a riverboat tour to finish, so we said goodbye to the Chena Village and started to make our way back up the river. As we started to sail away, we were passed by a small boat that contained Tekla, her staff worker, and one of their sled dogs. The dog looked really cute chilling inside the boat. We got to pass the kennels one more time. We didn’t stop this time, but we got waves and wags as we passed.

Then, we got to try Some of their local and renowned Captain Jim’s smoked salmon. It was harder to get than the donuts, but it was still very tasty, and we were glad we got to experience it. If you like canned smoked salmon, it’s definitely a solid choice. While I like salmon and seafood, I still think I preferred the donut.

After two hours mostly on water, it was time to trade our sea legs for land legs as we pulled up to dock once again and make our way off the beautiful river boat.

We got a little more time to do some shopping, where I purchased a stuffed husky as my Granite to go along with my new book. Then we had to hop back on the bus so that we could get checked into to our final hotel of the trip in Fairbanks.

We arrived and were checked in by 6:00pm. We got a little rest and recovery time before our tummies were rumbling again, and we knew we would need to get some food before calling it a day.

We didn’t feel like venturing out too far, so we decided to just have dinner at the restaurant in our hotel, the Red Lantern Steak & Spirits. I got their Gold Rush Wings, and Luke got their Pub Chicken sandwich. We’d had a lot of top notch meals on this trip, and while this one didn’t make the top of the list, it was still a very good meal.

It did have the slight disadvantage of being our last Alaskan supper, so there was a certain air of melancholy. It had been an amazing trip, and although we did have the next day before an evening flight, we didn’t have anything on the itinerary, and it definitely felt like a conclusion. While ending a trip is always sad, we had also been away from home for a while and were sad to go but happy to be back home.

I took a large amount of videos on our River Discovery, so instead of forcing you to muddle through them, I tried to make a quick compilation that summed it all up as best as I could. Some of them are of course sped up, but I think you’ll get the idea. Please enjoy, and don’t forget to come back for the finale of our Alaska journey!