2010 - July 5 (Day 20) Valdez to Palmer

We packed up in the rain this morning in Valdez. They say it's been raining there for two weeks. There is only one highway in or out of Valdez, so we had to backtrack about 115 miles over the same section of Richardson Highway on our way out that we traveled coming in. A few miles after leaving town, we started the uphill climb. After a few miles, we crested the pass at 2,680 feet - all in one climb. Pretty cool!

As you can see from the pictures, we saw a few more glaciers and the weather cleared off nicely when we got away from the coast. We had lunch along the Glenn Highway with a view of the Nelchina Glacier. Here in Palmer, it's mostly cloudy (white ones) and pretty windy. It may be blowing up some rain. Someone told me that Alaska very seldom has violent weather, just rain and a little wind, so we'll probably be OK.

Just before getting into Palmer, we stopped and took a tour of The Muskox Farm. They have about sixty head of Muskoxen right now. I always wanted a sweater made from qiviut (the soft under fur of the muskox), but when a knit sock hat with ear flaps cost $180, I don't think I could stand a sweater. They had them in Skagway for $1200 - $1300!! Qiviut is much softer than cashmere and eight times warmer than wool by weight.

We found the Matanuska River Park in our Alaska Camping book. It's just outside Palmer, but it's run my the borough of Matanuska - Susitna, whatever that is! Anyway, it's a very nice small local park and the campsite is only $15.00 with electricity.

Tomorrow, it's south thru Anchorage toward Homer on the Kenai Peninsula. It's supposed to be beautiful there, but we'll probably take a couple of days to get there.