5/13/23: Our Alaskan Road Trip Begins!

I planned to continue writing about our 2022 trip to Newfoundland until I realized there was no logical stopping point, since that trip was our longest-ever road trip. Given that Newfoundland accounted for only a tiny portion of it, I didn't want to commit to writing about a journey that ended literally months later. That was too daunting right now with upcoming trips planned. Instead, I want to finish writing about the road portion of our May 2023 trip to Alaska after our cruise ended. Here's a link to the last post that I wrote on Alaska: https://bergersadventures8.blogspot.com/2023/06/51023-skagway-movie-set-against.html

The cruise, which had started in Vancouver, BC, a week earlier, ended in Whittier, a tiny community of 200 people at the head of the Passage Canal, about 60 miles southeast of Anchorage, in southcentral Alaska. Steven and I immediately jumped on a tour bus for a visit to an animal sanctuary before picking up a rental car at the Anchorage airport. More on Whittier in the next post.

Before leaving Whittier, we caught a quick glimpse of Leonard Glacier.

Immediately after viewing the glacier, we entered a single-lane tunnel that also served as a fallout shelter due to the risk of earthquakes in the area. Drivers heading north to Anchorage can only enter on the half-hour and exit on the hour. Buses going to or from the cruise port are spaced out to allow for room in the 'bugout shelter,' according to the driver.

Immediately after leaving the tunnel, we had glorious views of Portage Lake and Portage Glacier behind us. The driver told us that there are 100,000 glaciers and mountain lakes in the state, but as we also recently discovered in both Iceland and Greenland, most are unnamed.

"It's not the cold that gets to you, but the darkness for those who stay or live in Alaska all year," the driver said.

The lure of this particular bus trip from the cruise port to the airport was being able to explore the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center on the outskirts of Anchorage. It was a marvelous opportunity to guarantee wildlife sightings in the 200-acre natural habitat. The year-round facility takes in orphaned animals and also works with state and federal agencies to breed animals for reintroduction into their natural habitat. A coup was the recent reintroduction of a herd of wood bison, once feared extinct, into the Arctic tundra.

We discovered that qiviut, the wool from the underside of a muskox, has a heat factor five times that of any other wool. I didn't ask how hard it was to get it, however!

One of the center's main attractions was the opportunity to walk the loop to see moose, elk, and bears in magnificent surroundings.

I'd read that there were an estimated 250 black bears, 60 grizzlies, and lots of moose living within Anchorage's city limits, even though more than half of the state's population lives in the city. This was as close as I wanted to get to any bear, thank you!

The drive to Anchorage continued along the narrow, two-lane Seward Highway, a National Scenic Byway, through the protected public lands of Chugach National Park.

The first 45 miles or so of the highway followed a body of water called Turnagain Arm, a narrow finger of water that was part of the Cook Inlet. It was named for Captain James Cook, the first European to venture here, as he was forced to turn his ship around to get out. Gold was found here in 1896, a year before the well-known Klondike Gold Rush. Some of the tiny communities still in existence along the arm were gold rush hamlets, founded on the banks of the gold-bearing creeks that flowed into Turnagain Arm.

The driver joked that Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, lived in the lake!

The driver mentioned that one neighborhood in Anchorage is the most diverse in the country, but unfortunately, he didn't go into any further details. We were surprised to hear from him that Anchorage had a violent crime rate that was akin to Detroit's. He added that bear spray works well on people, too! Another interesting fact is that one of the first Costco stores in the country was also in Anchorage. After he advised us that if we want to meet the locals, we should go to this place for a hot dog and a Coke for all of $1.50, we stopped after picking up our rental car!

We knew that almost every Alaskan community had a cultural center dedicated to showcasing and nurturing the unique Alaska Native culture in that region. The best example was supposed to be the Alaska Native Heritage Center, but it was unfortunately closed when we popped by. We were disappointed.

Instead, we headed further north on the Glenn Highway, also known as the Glenn. In a state with no shortage of amazing road trips, the Glenn is one of Alaska's most jaw-dropping drives, running through mountain valleys that "look like they were carved by a higher power." It was soon evident why most of the corridor has been declared a National Scenic Byway.

One of the reasons why we chose to venture along the Glenn was to stop at the 350-year-old Alaska Native village of Eklutna, now home to Eklutna Village Historical Park. In the 1700s, the Russian Empire colonized Alaska, establishing numerous outposts along its southern coast. The old log Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church was the cathedral in Eklutna. Seeing this again made me think of you, Masha!

The new Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church was built in 1962. If we'd been able to enter, we would have seen that the interior was modeled after Noah's Ark. A sign indicated that it offered an Akathist service on Thursday nights, something I hadn't heard of before.

Click on the image to make it bigger, so you can read the 'Thank You' in the Indigenous language!

Note the traditional three-barred Russian Orthodox cross in the adjacent Dena'ina Athabascan Cemetery. I read online that the Dena’ina people have been in the Cook Inlet area of Southcentral Alaska for almost 1000 years, and that the village is likely the oldest continuously inhabited Dena’ina settlement, as well as the oldest inhabited place of any kind in the municipality of Anchorage. 

Looking at these pictures for the first time in two and a half years, the gaily painted structures remind me of those we saw on our recent trip to Greenland. The spirit houses reflect the blending of beliefs between the Dena’ina, a Native Alaskan Athabascan people, and the Russian Orthodox Church. The bright colors are said to be a blend of the deceased’s family colors.

Before Russian Orthodox missionaries settled in the region, the Dena’ina people customarily cremated the deceased. The ashes were collected and placed in baskets that would be placed in a tree or by a river to allow their spirit to journey to what the Dena’ina refer to as “the High Country.”

After the Dena’ina began converting to Russian Orthodox in the early 1800s, they were forbidden by the church to perform cremations, and the deceased were buried according to the church's teachings. Adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church believe that there is a 40-day period when the spirit of the dead make their journey from the grave. To provide shelter for traveling spirits, the Dena’ina people built spirit houses over graves. Before the spirit houses are placed over the grave, the mound is covered with a blanket, which, according to the Dena’ina people, provides warmth and comfort to the dead's soul. Most spirit houses also feature the traditional three-barred Russian Orthodox cross.

Now, this was the first (and last!) time I had seen a cemetery marker like this!

What a stellar view from the Glenn as we continued north to Palmer, a town that describes itself as "Alaska at its Best." The area around the town has been continuously inhabited by the Ahtna and Dena'ina people for thousands of years. 

It was hard to miss the massive fields on both sides of the road in the town's fertile Matanska Valley.

In the early 1900s, miners, railroad workers, and homesteaders began to colonize this fertile area near the Matanuska River. In 1935, during the middle of the Depression, one of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs relocated 203 families from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and built the town of Palmer and many of the surrounding farms, in what was called the Matanuska Colony. Families were promised the land, a house, a barn, and a $3,000 loan, which had to be paid back to the federal government. 

Sadly, however, when the families arrived in May 1935, they discovered that home construction and land clearing were grossly behind schedule. Mismanagement of the project, challenges with adapting to farming so far north, and skyrocketing debt led to steep turnover in the Colony. Many families abandoned the project to return home or look for better prospects elsewhere in the territory. The challenges of moving more than a thousand people thousands of miles, supplying all the food, shelter, equipment, and materials needed to create a new community, and building it from scratch were so daunting that they almost doomed the project. However, Palmer emerged as a strong community that remains the heart of Alaska's agriculture.

One participant dryly noted, "I wouldn't have missed the experience for a million dollars, but I wouldn't do it again for two million." The new socialist community that grew out of the wilderness proved fascinating to tourists, including Will Rogers, the famous American cowboy, humorist, actor, and columnist, celebrated for his "folksy" wisdom, charm, and quick wit.

The tents on the left contained temporary offices and shops; those in the distance housed the colonists that first summer.

I was, quite frankly, stupefied to learn that Palmer is known as the "land of the giants" and is home to world-record cabbages, carrots, and other vegetables grown in the Matanuska Valley's deep loamy silt. The combination of glaciers, wind, water, and up to 20 hours of summer sun per day creates unique conditions for growing giant vegetables in Palmer.

Most record-setting vegetables are judged by their weight. This sculpture featured life-sized replicas of the cabbage, beet, carrot, and zucchini grown in the Matanuska Valley in 2009 that set world records for weight. The cabbage weighed 127 pounds, the beet 42.75 pounds, the carrot 18.99 pounds, and the mighty zucchini topped out at 29.65 pounds. Each fall, I make about 60 loaves of zucchini bread at one go to last us, our grandchildren in Chicago and San Francisco, and many in the community all year. Think of all the zucchini bread I could make with that record-setting one!

Months earlier, I had made a required reservation for us to tour the Musk Ox Farm two weeks hence. However, when we realized the farm was just 20 minutes away in a remote area outside of Palmer, I was able to change it. It meant we would now have time to visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center on our return to Anchorage, so it was great news all the way around.

Our tour of the farm started in their beautiful gift shop, which had a stunning array of qiviut yarns. I'm not sure I've shared with you that I am a huge knitter, particularly of a wide variety of toys for our grandchildren and afghans that I donate to charities through our church. Much as I love yarns, the prices of those soft and silky skeins of qiviut in the shop made my eyes water, and caused me to tighten the hold of my purse!

 I also couldn't justify spending $130 for a hat.

Our guide, Vivian, told us that musk ox, one of the Arctic’s oldest living species, was once a contemporary of the woolly mammoth. After Alaska's herd became extinct, some were reintroduced from Greenland in the 1950s. It's a little spooky recalling this now, as we only recently returned from that fascinating country. The Musk Ox Farm owners also traveled to Paris, Kentucky, to bring some of the animals back to Alaska. The farm is a non-profit, devoted to educating people about musk ox and harvesting the qiviut, their undercoat.

Vivian mentioned that four to five pounds of warm and light-as-a-feather qiviut are released indirectly from each musk ox. The wool is then sent to Peru, where it takes two to three years to be processed. There were 76 semi-wild musk oxen on the 75-acre site. Researchers are testing to see how they may have evolved from wild musk ox.

Vivian cautioned us not to crouch down in front of the musk ox because they see it as an aggressive tactic. She described the musk ox as a very social, playful, and curious animal, not always a couch potato! At 18 years old, a female musk ox weighs 600 pounds. A male musk ox weighs 800 pounds at 13 years old!

Vivian mentioned that heat adversely affects the animals' reproduction. There was one bull and two females in the breeding harem. During the summer, their eyes, located on the side of their heads, change to white so they can better see their prey, mostly bears and wolves. 

In the next pen was Luna, a three-legged musk ox who broke her leg during a herding accident.

Vivian advised us that male musk ox growl occasionally but roar during the rutting season.

Vivian told us that each year, there are different themes for naming the musk ox. This was Osprey, which meant she was born during the 'bird year.' Other musk ox were named after spices and other items. Olive, a ten-year-old female, was in the background.

In an interesting twist, we found out that the Musk Ox Farm was located on the former Matanuska Colony, whose visitor center we'd just come from.

Vivian pointed out Phoenix in the background, as the 21-year-old male was the farm's resident escape artist. He even climbed over a snowbank! 

The cute sign as we reentered the farm's visitor center:

Next post: Exploring part of Anchorage before touring the communities along the Turnagain Arm and returning to Whittier.

Posted on December 5th, 2025, from Denver, which finally received its first snow a few days ago. And no, we didn't just get a sprinkling, but we got dumped on, enough so that Steven was able to use his new 'toy,' a snowblower! Be safe, stay healthy, and connected with loved ones.