Day Forty Three: Piping Hot in Palmer

It’s over.  Done.  Finished.

August 9th was our last time together–and we really just had a continental breakfast before heading our separate ways.  Lots of tears shed and “see you down the road” in place of goodbyes were exchanged.  I drove back to Spangle, got here far later than I should have thanks to a major freeway accident.  The bright side is I have some more time to try and get posts up.  But I thank each and every one of my Fantasy family for the amazing adventure we shared together.  *sniff*

Back to Alaska, in terms of memories.  Palmer is located in the Matanuska-Sustina area.  The Matanuska and Sustina are rivers, and much of this location is referred to as “MatSu.”  It’s one of the few agricultural areas of Alaska, and routinely produces world record-setting produce.  Cool temperature vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, kale, carrots and potatoes thrive here.  The rich glacial soil, absence of common pests that plague crops in the lower 48, and sunlight til midnight are all key factors that contribute to the production.  A cabbage weighing 138 pounds from Palmer holds the current world record.  That’s a substantial cabbage.

I didn’t spend any of my time in Palmer being a tourist, unfortunately.  The night prior, I went with Steve and Terri S (WI) to dinner; we decided on pizza, figuring we’d find a nice air conditioned restaurant to relax in and forget about all the power problems the campground was having.

Wrong.

There is NO air conditioning.  They’ve never needed it before, and have been caught very much unprepared for the heat.  Of course the restaurant we chose uses wood burning ovens to bake their pies.  They had a door propped open, but it was roasting.  The pizza was delicious though.  And our waitress, who is from Palmer, is a college student in Indiana!  So talking to her was fun.  She said a lot of people don’t even have A/C in their cars and trucks.  Man, that would suck.

Anyway, the free day we had in Palmer proved to be another hot one.  I needed some stuff from Home Depot or Lowes.  The closest one I could find was in Wasilla, which is the town next door to Palmer.  I tried to stop at an RV dealer to see if they had any jack blocks or such, but they were closed.

Home Depot was crazed, as is not uncommon.  It was nice being in a store with things so familiar, as opposed to the Canadian stores which often lacked items I was wanting.  On my way back to the RV park, I spied a car wash, so I turned in and rinsed Rory off as best I could.  I was planning to use the foaming brush and really clean him up, but it was broken.  All in all, he did look better.

Our RV park was in a pretty spot, as most of this area is surrounded by mountains.  I did wish their power worked better, as once again we had outages in the afternoon as the temperatures spiked.  And I found out that Jerry and Wendy weren’t able to get anything done on their problem hangers, so would be spending another night in Glenallen.

We had a group dinner that night, with beef on buns, potatoes and veggies, along with a dessert.  There was a covered gazebo where the dinner was held, and while we were eating some Open Range owners active on the forum and Facebook stopped by.  They live in the Palmer area in the summer, but go down to the lower 48 for the winter.  It was neat to meet people you’ve “talked” to online face to face.

After dinner, I did some laundry and chatted with a couple who’d been on a caravan tour through a different company.  Their experience was quite contrary to ours; they were expected to all drive together in a convoy, for example.  One thing I love about RVing is meeting all the new people and learning about them.  We all come from different walks of life, but share a love of the outdoors and travelling.

Thankfully it cooled down in the evening.  I popped open as many windows as I could and hit the hay.  We were driving down the Kenai peninsula to Seward the next morning, and I couldn’t wait to see it!