Saturday July 17th, Keith and Holly Hawkings, AK
It felt so good to wake to sun and blue skies this morning, and it lasted all day.
We spent the morning in Palmer, it has quite an interesting history. 200 American farm families, hit by the dust bowl and the depression in the 1930’s were sent here to set up an agricultural colony. It was felt that the climate would be a good place to develop farming in Alaska. Watching a short film on the story at the information centre made you realize the hardships and struggle these families had, and many didn’t stay, but today many descendants still live and farm in the area.
The gardens beside the centre were in full summer bloom as well as summer vegetables.
Then it was a change of pace as we drove into Anchorage, we were on a motorway, thick with weekend traffic. Jenny and Brian Cox from Waiuku have great friends here and they arranged for us to visit them. Keith and Holly have been keeping in contact with us and offered us to park in their driveway. It was great to finally catch up with them, they are so welcoming. Their home is set in trees in a very quiet older part of town, but close to major roads. They both enjoy the outdoors and do a lot of rafting. Keith does some guiding and has led parties in the Yukon wilderness where they are flown in.
After a coffee they took us for a drive out past the nearby airport. It is the largest float plane airport in the world, where two lakes are joined by a canal and this is used as a runway. What a sight to see wall to wall small planes as well as trucks with 2 wheels…they have been adapted to use as tow vehicles for the planes!!
There are so many trails and on such a great afternoon people were out biking, running and walking. We stopped at Earthquake Park, where there is a memorial to the big quake of 1964 and had a walk down to Knik Arm…..our first sight of the west coast, and a great place to look across to the city.
Keith and Holly cooked some great salmon for tea that had been caught on the Kenai Peninsula….lets hope my Fisherman can catch some for us!
We spent the morning in Palmer, it has quite an interesting history. 200 American farm families, hit by the dust bowl and the depression in the 1930’s were sent here to set up an agricultural colony. It was felt that the climate would be a good place to develop farming in Alaska. Watching a short film on the story at the information centre made you realize the hardships and struggle these families had, and many didn’t stay, but today many descendants still live and farm in the area.
The gardens beside the centre were in full summer bloom as well as summer vegetables.
Then it was a change of pace as we drove into Anchorage, we were on a motorway, thick with weekend traffic. Jenny and Brian Cox from Waiuku have great friends here and they arranged for us to visit them. Keith and Holly have been keeping in contact with us and offered us to park in their driveway. It was great to finally catch up with them, they are so welcoming. Their home is set in trees in a very quiet older part of town, but close to major roads. They both enjoy the outdoors and do a lot of rafting. Keith does some guiding and has led parties in the Yukon wilderness where they are flown in.
After a coffee they took us for a drive out past the nearby airport. It is the largest float plane airport in the world, where two lakes are joined by a canal and this is used as a runway. What a sight to see wall to wall small planes as well as trucks with 2 wheels…they have been adapted to use as tow vehicles for the planes!!
There are so many trails and on such a great afternoon people were out biking, running and walking. We stopped at Earthquake Park, where there is a memorial to the big quake of 1964 and had a walk down to Knik Arm…..our first sight of the west coast, and a great place to look across to the city.
Keith and Holly cooked some great salmon for tea that had been caught on the Kenai Peninsula….lets hope my Fisherman can catch some for us!
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