First an important announcement: Today it did not rain!
Now to our story …
We arrived in Palmer on Sunday, 21 August, after a fairly short drive. We didn’t do much after we arrived, just took naps and went out to eat in the evening. We decided it had been so long since we last ate fast food, we decided to eat at Wendy’s! It sounds ridiculous, but I was so tired of monster restaurant burgers and huge portions we end up having for lunch the next day. I wish American restaurants would just have nice, realistic portions. Sigh.
It was a good thing we took it easy Sunday, because we did nothing but run around on Monday, 22 August. We started with a tour of the Colony House Museum, a restored house from the Matanuska Colony, a New Deal resettlement that brought 204 families from the northern reaches of the Midwest to settle in Alaska. It was both to help the families recover, and, more importantly to the US Government, increase the population of a very sparsely settled territory that seemed in some danger from other countries. It was a fascinating study in community with centralized government, utilities, and stores while each family was given 40 acres of land, a house, a barn, moving expenses, and living expenses for what amounted to a year while they got their farms established. The valley where Palmer is located is unusual. It has great soil, but was heavily forested. The growing season is short, but the long days of sunlight give plants an extra boost. They have had cabbages weight 100 pounds and rutabagas weight 50 pounds! We also got a walking tour of the old colony area. Quite interesting. And the scenery surrounding us is spectacular!
After the tours we had lunch at the Colony Alehouse, located in the historic old colony storehouse. We had a brief break then we went to the only Musk Ox farm in the world. I had really wanted to see musk ox in the wild, but we weren’t going to be far enough north. This was a good second choice. Note the farm trims the horns for the animal’s safety. They have a tendency to roughhouse with each other, and the sharp horns can cause damage.
The animals weren’t as large as I expected them to be. They are left overs from the last ice age where they coexisted with megafauna like mastodons! These are maybe 600 pounds full grown, significantly smaller than a bison.
After the musk ox, we went to the Independence Mine State Historical Site. Fascinating place! As with almost all the mines in Alaska, this one existed to mine gold. It was immensely profitable in its heyday, but it closed down in 1951. They basically just walked away from it, so it still has a large number of historic buildings and a reasonable amount of machinery. The mill was removed and other accessory machinery, but you can still see an awful lot even with the 70+ hard Alaska winters since.
We were sorry we couldn’t have been here for the few tours they do each day, but the self-guided tour was still enjoyable. The spot had great interpretive signage to put it in context.
And just like most of the places we have seen, there were glaciers.
We were only at 3500’, but it was obvious that autumn was beginning.
Tomorrow we go to Valdez, another coastal town.