Gakona to Anchorage, Journey’s End

Sunday, July 1

At breakfast in our hosts’ log home’s great room, there was lots to look at.  Picture windows overlooked the Copper River and the log walls were decorated with trophies of Alaskan wildlife of every description. It was like being in a taxidermist’s gallery!

The day was cool and cloudy as we set out for Anchorage on the Glenn Highway.  It was evident that we were traveling through beautiful country, and the cloud cover did not make for drop-dead views, but the day had its notable moments, nonetheless.  At a rest stop, we encountered a couple from Wasilla who were out hunting fossils and gold in the area. As has been common on this trip, the conversation was about where we’d been, where we’re from, etc. When Tom said he was from Scottsdale, they said that they had a daughter who’d recently bought a house there – Sarah Palin!!   All in our party were relieved that no inappropriate remarks had been made when they’d said they were from Wasilla!  For the rest of the day, right up until dinner at the airport tonight, one or another of us would just chuckle and say, “Sarah Palin’s parents!”, and we’d all laugh.

We made an interesting stop in Palmer, about thirty miles north of Anchorage.  The Palmer Colony was begun during the New Deal as an attempt to resettle destitute farmers from the northern Midwestern states on homesteads in what was hoped would be Alaska’s most fertile agricultural area.  There was a fascinating small museum dedicated to the establishment of the colony and many of the original buildings remain in the town.  The outlying farms look as if they could be in Upstate New York or the Midwest and the area did, indeed, prove to be an agricultural powerhouse.  The enormous vegetables (127-pound cabbages, etc.) that win prizes at the state fair and show up in news photos each year come from this part of the state.

From Palmer, we dropped our bags at the Anchorage airport, returned our rental car without questions and spent some time in a pub downtown, and then headed to the airport for dinner and our (very) red-eye flights to New York and Portland.  Jim and Donna have been great partners on this adventure and we all agree that this unforgettable month has flown by all too quickly.

Sunset from our cabin near Denali National Park on Saturday Morning at 12:30AM