How’s the Weather? – August 2 & 3, 2018

The short answer is I bought another jacket that has a waterproof side.  Rain everyday has been our experience so far.  On Thursday it wasn’t too bad because we were traveling most of the day to Copper River  Princess Lodge  with just a lunch stop in Palmer for lunch and a stop to see a glacier. Palmer was started as an experiment during the Depression as a government run colony of young families given land, house, barn and animals and lots of rules. Surprise!  By 1940 it was deemed a failure and the colony became a normal community with very few government rules and still exists.

Downtown Palmer

The lodge is exactly what you would imagine a lodge in Alaska would be like including the a large common room complete with fireplace and conversation groups of sofas and easy chairs.  There are even games and tables for folks to gather to play cards.  It is located on 200 acres right outside the Wrangell-St Elias National Park which is larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite and Switzerland combined and has higher mountains.  Because the lodge is so close to the Ranger Station, there are regular presentations at the lodge about the park.  This is an outdoorsman’s paradise designed for hiking and fishing.

View from large common room

At 8:30 every evening they have a flag lowering ceremony  where they take down the Princess, Alaska,  and U. S. flags and acknowledge any veterans in the group.  Jim was in that group.

Today, we went on a rafting excursion down the river, in the rain.  The company provided boots and rain gear to make it more bearable.  We saw several eagles and moose tracks, plus a fish wheel with several fish in it.  These wheels are used by some natives to catch their quota of salmon each season.  A family has a quota of 500 per season to sustain themselves.

Eagle along the river

Fish wheel

Tomorrow, we move from this remote location to Fairbanks which may be more our speed.