Friday July 16th, Matanuska River Park, Palmer, AK

180 Miles

A much drier day today, although heavy cloud most of the morning. We traveled west along the Glen Highway towards Anchorage, a great drive especially the second half. The mountains rose above us and we passed a number of glaciers, these are just so spectacular. The Matanuska Glacier is one of the closest to a highway in Alaska and looks amazing. . We will be traveling back over this highway later on, so will stop then and take a walk up onto the glacier. Hopefully the clouds will be lifted and we can see the top of the mountains.

Palmer is a really appealing little place. After the country that we have been through over the past few weeks, to see mown lawns and vegetable gardens is such a treat. There are quite a few vegetable growing farms surrounding the town and it is especially famous for its huge cabbages.

This town feels as though people care about it, our first stop was the visitors centre and just over the road the weekly market, called the Friday Fling was in full swing with live music and many stalls. As we needed to get our tyre repaired, thought we should do that first then come back to the market. Unfortunately the guys at Midas were really busy and it was 5.30 before we were back on the road again…and missed the market

The town has wifi available throughout so we parked in the main street to pick up emails, right outside a rather quaint store where Nita the owner was watering her flowers and her cabbage….that she tells us will be 30lb by the end of September! She was delightful and gave us a very warm welcome to town.

She gave us directions to this campground, one of the nicest municipal camps we have been to with mown lawns and gardens….rhubarb obviously grows really well, clumps are used as ornamental plants!