AK State Fair Day

This was an event packed day near Palmer in the Matanuska Valley which included a you-pick farm, the Alaska State Fair and a Russian Orthodox cemetery! This area is lush farmland surrounded by the Talkeetna Mountains. Our first stop of the day was Pyrah's Pioneer Peak Farm, a you-pick farm that was originally homesteaded and then used in a 1930s colony project to encourage lower 48 homesteaders to come to Alaska for agriculture.

The Pyrah family took it over in 1979 and ran it as an LDS church welfare farm. The church discontinued the welfare program in Alaska in 1988, but the Pyrah's continued to grow veggies and people continue to come and pick the ever expanding produce.

Our friend Brian, local volunteer at the nature center, drove us and our German volunteer Max on this day's excursion. Prices here were extremely reasonable, most items being $1 a pound.

The main objective of the day was rhubarb ($1.50/lb), but after gathering enough pounds for several pies, we also gathered broccoli, cauliflower, peas and potatoes. The cauliflower seemed quite picked over and when we asked about it, we were told that moose had eaten most the crop that week!

Some of the broccoli heads got rather large!

Other crops included lettuce, spinach, kale, turnips, carrots, and beans.
And then it was time to go to the fair and see the seriously big veggies!

This squash was a new AK record. The winning pumpkin was 859 pounds, but this slightly smaller 2nd place winner was much more photogenic!

If you don't know what to do with excess veges, here's an idea.

Tractors and quilts are my next two favorite fair stops. This tractor is one of only 132 built by the Friday Factory in 1948.

There was an exhibit on spinning that included probably 6-8 women each with their own unique wheel spinning merino wool, some blended with silk, to make beautifully soft yarn. Quilts hung all around, my favorite being this very Alaskan one.

Other exhibits, a show outside by Cirque Magnifique, and it was time to head back with one more short stop in the small village of Eklutna.

This is the original Russian Orthodox church, dating to the mid-1800s. The cemetery has been in use since 1650 and is now a blend of native practices and Orthodox Christianity.

This is the most fascinating cemetery I've ever seen. These are spirit houses which provide shelter for spirits. Families have similarly colored houses. Almost none of them have any name or date information.

This was perhaps the most unique of the shelters.

Unfortunately neither the original nor this current church were open.

Now...on to working on that 5 pounds of rhubarb we came home with!

Portage

There was not a cloud in the sky until afternoon! This was the sunny non-working day we'd been waiting for to go with local volunteer Brian to Portage. Heading south down Turnagain Arm on the Seward Highway we spotted one bald eagle.
Portage glacier itself is no longer visible from the visitor center and has receded drastically in the past 20 years. Instead of taking the boat, we opted to walk to nearby Byron Glacier.

This is a very hard ice field with the glacier farther behind me. Would not want to walk any farther on it as it was very slippery! There were cracks in this ice that Brian said have expanded greatly since last he visited, about a month ago.

Next stop was the Begich Boggs Visitor Center in Portage Valley, a beautifully designed Forest Service run center with great interactive displays and a video on glaciers. When the video ended the curtain parted to reveal an outstanding view of the glaciers. Quite a stunning finish! [Begich and Boggs were both Congressmen whose twin engine airplane disappeared in a remote section of Alaska in 1972.]

Lunch as a local restaurant was a delicious seafood chowder in a bread bowl.
Then over to the entrance of the tunnel that goes to Whittier. The tunnel is almost 2.5 miles long and was originally done in 1943 for the railroad. Today the train shares the tunnel with cars in an orchestrated rotation of train, then east and westbound vehicles. With no reason to go to Whittier we just enjoyed the views and then headed back to Anchorage.

Reed Lake & Snowbird Mine

Another superb hike! This hike was east of Palmer in the Talkeetna Mountains on Hatcher Pass and was perhaps the best one yet.

The first mile and a half was an easy flat stroll to this fixer-upper, the only remaining building of a small village that was there for the Snowbird Mine above. After this the trail got steeper and followed a cable that ran all the way to the mine. We used the cable on one short section to help pull ourselves up.

The views just kept getting better all the way up. A small waterfall, several lakes, lush vegetation and views out into the valley that can't be beat. The pictures don't show it, but several times the sun was shining and there was blue sky!

Snowbird Mine was prospected in the 1920s, developed in the 40s and closed down in 1950. Haven't found any source that tells how much gold was pulled out. The mine entrance was higher on the mountain than this rubble we went to and there didn't appear to be a trail to it. We did go on higher up though, partly on a trail and partly cross country.

With a bit of rock scrambling, we got a view of this lovely high mountain lake, Lower Reed Lake, and then found a trail again that led a little higher, our summit for the day. Some interesting rocks here, one of which Tom held up for so we could get a good picture.

Happy hikers Kristen, Jane, Tom & Ron

The way down was cut considerably shorter by a few well placed patches of snow!

Fireweed going red for the fall, a marmot and finally blueberries for munching on finished off this great hike.

Alaska Native Heritage Center

A couple weeks ago we got a Cultural Pass that was good for the Anchorage Museum and the Native Heritage Center. At that time we did the Museum which was wonderful. No pictures, but there is an art gallery featuring Alaska's best known artist Sydney Laurence who does many Denali paintings; an historic photo exhibition of Bristol Bay salmon fishing industry; displays of artifacts and heritage exhibits of life in the North spanning from gold rush days to the pipeline; and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center. The Smithsonian exhibit was predictably awesome with artifacts from many native tribes and brief videos explaining the traditions of each. We spent 3-4 hours in this museum and it's a good thing you don't have to do both on the same day!

The Native Heritage Center is an outdoor experience and we were fortunate to have it be a perfect weather day. Natives run this center completely as far as I can tell. There are 11 distinct cultures and 21 different languages in Alaska and the Center is organized based on 5 cultural groups that have similarities culturally or geographically. A guided tour takes the visitor to five different sites where Native people of the represented culture give a 5- 10 minute talk and show some of the tools of survival from the past.

Athabascan, the most familiar group to most of us from the lower 48, is the largest of the Alaska Natives occupying land from the interior to the Cook Inlet. Their pole and log homes were built above the ground and look similar to log cabins, but you'd better duck coming through that door!

Contrary to popular belief, igloos were not the typical home (that is Inuit from Canada). The Yupik and Cupik had homes underground and this is the qasgiq, the men's house. At age 5, boys were sent here where they were taught all the things a man should know. There was also a women's house and when the teaching was complete, boys and girls traded houses and were taught the jobs of the opposite sex. In the winter the doorway was shut off and you would enter and exit from a hole in the ground inside the house and outside the door with a low ramp that went down 2 or 3 feet and then back up to ground level, thus keeping the cold air down where it belongs!

The Inupiaq & St. Lawrence Island Yupik also had underground houses that were very efficiently heated with a large, slightly concave lava rock which was filled with seal oil that would burn for up to 8 hours and then keep the place warm for another 8 hours.

Whales were also very important to subsistence living both then and now and one eye catcher here are these grey whale jaws that frame the Heritage Center from across a small manmade lake.

Another stop displayed qayaqs (kayaks) of the Unangax & Alutiiq people. I do hope you're having fun trying to pronounce these names. These were used for everything from trade & fishing to warfare and it is said that modern engineering cannot improve upon their design.

Our last stop was at a tent where native artists were learning rock carving. The rock they use is one of two: Indiana limestone or Utah raspberry alabaster! They look white now, but the alabaster will be polished and become a beautiful reddish color.

fish hatchery visit

Tuesday was an unusually sunny, warm day, perfect for our planned visit to the Ft Richardson Fish Hatchery and the Native Heritage Center.
After showing driver's licenses, registration and proof of insurance for the vehicle, and a background check to be sure we weren't terrorists, three of us were admitted on base and drove to the hatchery. Our tour was given by college intern and future biologist Megan who was an extremely knowledgeable guide.

Begun in the late 50s to provide fish for post lakes, the hatchery raises Arctic Char, Grayling, Rainbow Trout, Chinook (Red) and Coho (Silver) Salmon. It is run by Game and Fish today. We began indoors at a run that held about 100,000 Arctic Char fry. The trough here is an automated feeder. Some of the fish are held for 3 or 4 years before they are released into sport fishing areas.

A new hatchery off the base is almost ready to be open to the public. It will be totally indoors but that will help avoid a variety of biological diseases with better controls and less chance of disease for the fish. The tanks at the new hatchery will be similar to this one: a 20-ft. diameter round tank containing around 9,000 fish, in this case rainbow trout. Fish from the base are currently being transported to the new one and ultimately the base facility will close down. Fish from this tank will be pumped out of the tank through tubes soon to the outdoor tanks that were our last stop.

Moving outdoors, we saw long tanks that had 2 and 3 year old Coho or Silver Salmon. The awnings are so that the fish don't get sunburned! I never thought about a sunburned fish, but in a natural setting, fish congregate in shaded areas, under growth, in the shade and that's exactly what they are doing here crowded together under the shelter.

The last stop were tanks that held 2 and 3 year old rainbow trout, some soon to be released. One big surprise to all of us was that all these fish are sterile! The eggs are removed and subjected to 10,000 psi pressure which alters the chromosomes and you end up with 3 "X" chromosomes instead of XX or XYs. This is done so that hatchery fish will not affect wild fish by cross-breeding with them.

Colorful Rainbow Trout