Sunday, June 20, 2010, Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and the weather is looking good. It has stopped the light rain and is supposed to be warmer. We went up to the Independence Mine State Historical Park. It is high up in the mountains off of the Glenn Highway on a very rough road and over the Hatcher Pass Summit. It is much colder up here and we are in the clouds because we are so high. It is 271 acres of restored mine machinery from the 1930s to the 1950s. The mine was closed down during WWII because all nonessential jobs were cut off to put the employment force to work on war munitions. Then it was reopened until 1953. There is still some gold mining going on around here, just not at this mine. The landscape up here is tundra and you can see it. No big timber growing, lots of wind. When the mine was going strong there was an actual town up here with a general store, a doctor who came up once a month and a school for the children of the miners. Funny thing is the miners all had boy children during this time; so the ad for a teacher was for a male teacher only; plus no single women were allowed to live up here.
Then we went to check out some fishing off of the Parks Highway at Willow Creek State Recreation Area where the Susitna River meets the Deshka River. The Susitna River comes from the Susitna Glacier and you can see where the gray glacial runoff meets the fresh water. The salmon like to swim to the glacial water and sit at the bottom before they swim up to lay their eggs. When you fish for them you can't use bait because it is a sport fishing. You use fancy flies that cost at least $5. a piece and toss it in to irritate the salmon til they bite it. Daddy went fishing on Monday night and only had 25 # test line on his rod. A salmon hit it and was so big, it broke the line. So he not only didn't catch the big salmon, but he also lost the $5. lure! Tuesday morning he's going out again; this time with 50# or 75# test line!
The Athabascan Indians lived in the area of the Matanuska River and the Susitna River and in 1890 George Palmer built a trading post here. Later during the New Deal Relief Agencies under Franklin Roosevelt, social workers picked 203 families that were of Scandinavian descent, lived in the northern counties of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and had been hard hit by the dust bowl and then the Great Depression to join an agricultural colony being formed in this area of Alaska to utilize great agricultural potential in Matanuska Valley. So early in the summer of 1935, these hard working and "not afraid of cold" people came to this town of Palmer. Sad to say, the failure rate was high, but most of the descendants of those people still live in this valley today. Palmer eventually became the capital of this region and is now the headquarters for a cooperative market and is the state's most productive farming region. With its almost 24 hours of sunlight the crops grow exceptionally large. The growing season has 100 to 118 days a year with long hours of sunlight.This is the only community in Alaska that developed from an agricultural economy.
Located in this valley is a Musk Ox Farm. The musk ox is a prehistoric relic that survived the Ice Age. They feel best when the temperature is -80 degrees. The bulls weigh about 900 to 1000# and the cows weigh about 400 to 500 #. The calves are born at 20 to 25 # after an eight month gestation period. When danger threatens they place the calves behind them and circle around them so their huge horns face the threat. From August to September is the season of the males rutting where they battle to see who is the strongest or bravest to be the one bull to be allowed all of the cows to himself. They will place themselves 100 feet apart and charge each other at about 35 mph. hitting heads. They do this until 1 of them gives up his right to the female cows. Then the last one left is the dominant bull or the alpha bull. For a while they had 1 alpha bull (who weighed 1000 #) dominant for 15 years called Sampson, and then he just stood aside and let the next one, Goliath, take over. Goliath has only been the alpha musk ox for 1 year now. Sampson has gotten old and doesn't care if he has female cows or not. He has lost some weight and just lazes around in the fields. They allow the musk ox to die naturally and still try to keep human interaction at a minimum. We were allowed to feed them, but not to pet them or touch them.
They are not part of the Ox family and they do not have musk oil glands as the Russians once thought to be used in perfume production. In fact, they almost became extinct because so many of them were killed for their musk and horns. They have very long hairs on the outside of their fur. This is called guard hair to protect the inner layer of hair. The inner layer keeps them warm when it is -80 degrees in the winter; and the snow and ice don't bother them a bit. This inner layer of hair in called QIVIUT. It is 8 times warmer than sheep's wool, so the Athabascan Indians used to take it when the animals shed in the late spring and summer and make yarn out of it. Now the ranchers comb the musk ox very carefully instead of waiting for it to fall on the ground. It is difficult to take all of the grasses and dirt out of it, but sometimes they have to. . The cows are touchy when they are nursing calves, so they sometimes don't comb them. The musk ox naturally shed this inner wool each spring, sometimes coming off in clumps. And they cannot be combed when they are wet from rain because it gets all knotty and hurts the animal. It seems to rain a lot here too. The yarn is soft, very warm, extremely light weight and has no barbs on it so it won't itch most people. I asked the price of a headband that was knitted from this yarn- $155.00. It is the finest yarn in the world. It is very hard to obtain the yarn because there are not many musk oxes and they each only have 1 calf each year. So it takes a long time to grow up a large herd. This yarn makes up into a fabric like lace and yet it is extremely warm. And the best thing yet is- you can wash it in any temperature water and it won't be ruined like wool and cashmere. It is also naturally a dark beige color, so it complements any color you place it with. Maybe in the distant future we will make use of some of this thinking. The Native Alaskans would knit hats, scarves, mittens and headbands out of it. Now some of them still do make things and sell them at the "Oomingmak" Musk Ox Co-Operative with the money going towards the native Alaskan culture. The native ladies receive a supplemental income from the knitting or crocheting of this yarn which complements their mostly subsistence lifestyle. At the end of the year they receive a dividend from the Co-Op. The name "Oomingmak" is the Athabascan name for musk ox.
The Musk Ox eat grains and several varieties of grass and wheat which grows very well here in this valley. Sometimes the mother refuses to feed a baby and then the rancher has to step in to bottle feed them. But mostly, the musk ox are left in their paddocks and fed and supervised when all ages are placed together. There is not too much human interaction because they want the musk ox herd to remain wild. One of their bulls named "Fat Boy" was on the Jay Leno show.
We were able to see these animals and feed the youngsters. The mothers wouldn't allow us to get close to the babies, and the bulls were too lazy to even come to the fence. This farm was built at the farthermost region south that the musk ox could survive because it really can get warm here, and their coat is so thick. But, when they tried the farm further north, they couldn't get the supplies they needed as easily and then there would be no tourists to come and donate money to further this experiment. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has an Agricultural Experiment Station and Co-Operative Extension Service Office to assist in this experiment very near here.
From the Musk Ox Farm we drove to Long Rifle Lodge and ate dinner as we overlooked the Matanuska Glacier. The restaurant had 25 wildlife mounts of all kinds of animals. One grizzly bear was enormous. Check out the pictures! Then we drove down to the glacier. It is the largest glacier accessible by car in Alaska and then just a 15 to 20 minute hike over the Edge Nature Trail through boreal forests to the glacier. The walk has moderate inclines and some roots sticking up that we had to be careful of. Once we got close to the glacier the land was all gravelly and frozen dirt and ice and slippery.
The Matanuska Glacier starts in the Chugach Mountains some 27 miles away. 18,000 years ago it reached all the way to the town of Palmer where the agriculture is now. Maybe that's why they can grow such phenomenal crops. It is 2 miles wide on average, but at its terminus it is 4 miles wide. For the past 400 years it has remained stable with no increase or decrease in size and no movement. What ice melts from this glacier flows into the Matanuska River as very steely gray, but they have enough snow in the winter to keep this glacier the same size each year. From a distance this glacier looks massive and then when you are up close to it, it really dwarfs you; it is like an ice mountain. Daddy also climbed the glacier; but I didn't. As klutsy as I am I was afraid I'd fall and break a leg or arm. Can you imagine a vacation with that? The glacier has these cracks all over it and in these cracks the ice is aqua blue. It's incredible! We saw glaciers in Antarctica, but we were never this close to be able to touch it. At some points Daddy had to crawl on threes and fours to climb the glacier. I"m glad I didn't climb it, but I'm glad he had the chance . What did he do on Father's Day when he was 57? He climbed a Glacier!!!
We did so much today traveling over 200 miles that the next couple of days we won't be traveling far from the RV. The RV goes into the shop to get the AC fixed and we need to get the AC fixed on the car too. Seems like Alaska is getting a lot of our money up here.When the RV is fixed here in Anchorage we will drive to the Kenai Peninsula to see what fish and clams we can catch. Next Monday Noah and Tyler fly in and we have an extremely busy schedule prepared for them. I bet they go home tired!!! They will be going hiking, swimming, fishing, clamming, hopefully the zoo trip and the earthquake park trip, a trip on a big ship to see 26 glaciers with some of them calving into the sea. Jacksonville Beach might seem pretty mild after this trip!