Tag: Palmer

Along the way to Valdez

I seldom post on travel days, but today was the most beautiful we have experienced on the trip. While Banff and Jasper were gorgeous, they can’t compare to the huge peaks surrounding us on all sides while we drive along the river bottom. These mountains were sculpted by glaciers, and they are craggy and rough. I tried to get pictures, but with the flat, cloudy light (yes, it clouded over again!) none of them come close to replicating what I saw. Mountains were piled upon mountains, many being 12,000-14,000’ high. They seem higher since we were only t 1000’ – 2000’. I wish I could show you.

We did see glacier after glacier again.

Matanuska Glacier for a distance
Matanuska close up of the edge
River of ice behind Matamuska
Worthington Glacier

There we’re lots and lots of much smaller glaciers along the way plus one larger one I couldn’t get a safe spot to photograph. These two are the big touristy ones.

We also visited one of the visitor centers for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. This is the largest national park in the US with over  13M acres in the park and another 4.8M acres in the preserve. The park by itself makes up 15% of the total acres of the entire national park system! Sadly the native cultural center was closed, but they did have a fish wheel outside. When the salmon are running upriver to spawn, they truly just swim into the basket and get dumped into the box!

Fish wheel

The last canyon before we reached Valdez is not far below Thompson Pass. The pass is the snowiest place in the US averaging 500” of snow a year. It had odd road markers well above our heads for plowing! The canyon is the repository of all that snow, and is deeply carved by the runoff. It is so full of waterfalls that you see multiples everywhere you look. The most famous are Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls. They have huge pull offs to handle the sightseeing visitors.

Horsetail Falls
Bridal veil falls

Next to the pull off for Bridal Veil Falls there was this cute little spring gushing out of the wall drilled out for the road.

Cute spring

We are staying in the Bear Paw Adult Campground. There are only a couple dozen sites here, but they have a nearby family campground with many, many more. It is very crowded with all our big rigs parked in here. This is much quieter, and our site is right on the harbor entrance. We sat outside a while just watching the commercial and private boats move in and out of the harbor. There is separate docking for the massive oil tankers that move the 2,000,000 barrels of oil that comes from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline every day. Tomorrow we go on a wildlife/glacier cruise. I hope the weather stays dry.

Palmer, AK

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!

Looking down the street in each direction

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.

Mature musk oxen have a helmet style of horn.
Young ones have horns, but not the full helmet yet
Youngster, baby, mama

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.

Information about the historic park
This boarding house for the miners has been renovated.
The mine supervisor’s home, now the Visitor Center

 

Lots of buildings in decent repair
More mining buildings
But not everything made it through unscathed

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.

Of course there is a glacier in the distance!

We were only at 3500’, but it was obvious that autumn was beginning.

Fall has begun in the hills

Tomorrow we go to Valdez, another coastal town.