Thursday, July 25, 2013 (Mountain View RV Park, Palmer, Alaska)

We had a pretty darned lazy start to the day...I got up at 6:30 and it never ceases to amaze me how fast time can go...next thing I know, it's 8:30!  Sheesh!  As usual, I sat with my coffee and laptop doing our blog (yay...we have internet again!)  Then it was time for our resistance exercises, breakfast, dishes....and...finally, we are ready to go explore the Palmer area!!  It was going on 11:30...can't rush into these things!

On our way into Palmer (the campground is 3 miles out of town), we crossed over the Matanuska River.  This is the old bridge that is now used at a pedestrian walkway with trails on either side of the river...

We went to the Visitors Information Center to find out more about Palmer..."Palmer was established around 1916 as a railway station on the Matanuska Branch of the Alaska Railroad. In 1935, Palmer became the site of one of the most unusual experiments in American history: the Matanuska Valley Colony. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, one of the many New Deal relief agencies created by President Roosevelt, planned an agricultural colony in Alaska. 203 families, mostly from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, were invited to join the colony. They arrived in Palmer in the early summer of 1935. Although the failure rate was high, many of their descendants still live in the Mat-Su Valley today."

The Visitors Center was a mini museum in itself...lots of information.  Once we were finished, we went for a walk to see some of the historical sections of the community.  This is the bell off of the USS St. Mihiel...it is significant to the City of Palmer because the St. Mihiel was the ship which transported the first colonists from Minnesota on there way to Alaska. The colonists left San Francisco on board the USAT St. Mihiel enroute to Alaska in the spring of 1935 as part a New Deal project.

Our walk really didn't amount to much because the map we had didn't make sense, so we decided to go back to the truck and go for a drive instead.  We quickly determined that there really isn't much in Palmer, so we thought we would take a drive to nearby Wasilla.  That seems to be the major hub of the area, having a lot of newer shopping areas and fast food restaurants.

This is Wasilla Lake...

...and City Hall...

We stopped to fuel up with diesel...the best price we have found in a long, long time...$4.13/gallon (that's like about $1.03/litre...roughly).  Then we headed back to Palmer...these are the mountains that we are camped near...

We parked the truck and went for a walk over the bridge (the one in the picture at the start of this blog) and followed the walking path down to the river.  We met two couples camped down there in small Class C motorhomes.  One couple was from the San Francisco area and one couple was from Wales (they fly out from Anchorage tomorrow).  We had a pleasant chat with them and found out about their travels to Denali...good tips!

We were back home around 3:30...time for a little work around the trailer (since we have full hookups) before we leave in the morning.  Tomorrow we are driving a short distance to a State Park just outside Anchorage...hopefully there will be a spot available for us. We will likely be there for a few days while we check out the area...I'm looking forward to going to Costco...pretty bad, eh?

Steve took a couple of pictures of the RV park...



See those clouds building?  Well, after a beautiful warm day with temps around 78F/24C, we had a bit of a thunderstorm...not a lot of thunder and lightning but a heck of a down pour!