Palmer - Hatcher Pass

Tuesday, August 3 - Today, we woke up to a rare sight - sunshine.  Here's what blue sky in Alaska actually looks like!

Although we had raindrops off and on during the day, we also had some sunshine (sometimes at the same time of the raindrops).  It just makes us feel better to see some sun (unlike our friends and families in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, and other hot spots).

We took a drive on the Hatcher Pass Road, with scenic alpine views, an old (restored) gold mines, and pretty creeks and rivers.  When we were here in July 1998, this pass was still closed due to snow, but today we got to drive it, about a 50-mile side road.  The Little Susitna River runs along side this road, and it is just beautiful.  We stopped to check it out.

We even got Dave out of the car for this view.

Joe and I fished for silver salmon at the end of this river on our first trip to Alaska (1992), where it gently flows into the Cook Inlet, so I looked to see if there were any running upstream.  (I didn't see any.)

Although I thought we were done with Brenda rocks (since our rock boxes are all full, and we found the perfect rock formation in Anchorage), here is another one we thought she would like.

The Hatcher Pass Road is another awesome Alaska drive.  We were in the tundra, and the mountains looked like they were covered with carpet.  There were just a couple patches of snow here, but we could still see snow-covered mountains in the distance.

The Independence Mine is on this road, which was one of the largest gold producers in the Willow Creek mining district from 1938 to 1941.  These buildings are being restored and it is now a state historical park.

Coming back down from this mine, we followed Willow Creek for several miles, another very pretty creek with beaver dams when we got to lower elevation (no picture of the beaver dams, for some reason).

Joe explained to Marilyn how difficult it is to walk on tundra because it is so spongy and lumpy, which we learned on our trip back from Prudhoe Bay.  Here she is gingerly trying it out.

Our traveling mascot, Ar'gent, accompanied us on our travels today.  Here, she got to run free, without her leash, for a little while at our creek-side stop.

The next creek we stopped at was Deception Creek, with was more tea-colored.  It is supposed to be a fishing creek, and we did see one jump, but we didn't see any salmon swimming upstream.

Finally, we reached the end of our scenic drive and found a place for lunch.  And Joe found himself a polie bear!

This one, we could bring home and put in the yard!  It would be great at Christmas time, because it was all lit up (doesn't show up in the picture).

We were on the highway to Wasilla and were going to be passing the campground we stayed at there.  This is where Mazie talked them out of some rhubarb.  So, today we stopped and Mazie and Marilyn asked if they could pick (or buy) rhubarb again.  Yeah, there is rhubarb pies in our future again!

Mazie had another bunch equally as large!  And they both make excellent pies.

Interestingly, the building right next to this campground showed evidence of a fire, and we did not remember that from our visit.  The campground manager said it had caught fire just two nights ago, they think something electrical caused it.  It was 3 apartments, and everyone (including pets) got out ok.  There's a huge fire hole in the back, and she said there were 10 firetrucks there, at 1:30 a.m.  Glad we missed this excitement!