Day 42
Tuesday, July 19
On the road to Palmer

Today's blog will be rather short. We drove from Seward to Palmer, a distance of about 168 miles. We had to come back to Anchorage and then go back north toward Denali National Park on this drive. There is only one road to and from Seward, and it comes from Anchorage. After going about 40 miles north of Anchorage we turned to the east and came over to Palmer. There are not many roads in Alaska so you end up doing a lot of backtracking. Some on our caravan were unhappy that we would be seeing the same territory again, but surprisingly, it looked completely different today from last week. On our way back by the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet we saw a vast range of mountains on the far west side of the Inlet.

 

We didn't see them at all last week when we drove that road. The whole range was covered in snow, and it was difficult to separate the mountains from the clouds. The water in the Turnagain Arm looked entirely different. Instead of the beautiful green hue we saw last week, we saw murky brown water being whipped up by high winds. Also, the tide was way out last week when we went by, and today the tide was completely in.

After arriving in Palmer I cleaned up the front of the trailer and washed my truck. It was so filthy! I never let my truck get this dirty.

 

 

At 5:00 we attended a social and at 7:00 we returned for a campfire with smores and doughboys. I'm sure you know what smores are, but doughboys? None of us had heard of doughboys, so Ken demonstrated how to make one. First you take a long stick with a banana shaped form on the end.

 

Then you take a canned biscuit and form it around the banana shaped form. Once it is completely formed, you hold the stick in the fire and let the dough cook.

 

After about 10 minutes you remove the cooked banana shaped dough from the form and fill it with a variety of goodies: pudding, cherries, M/M's, whipped cream, all kinds of candies and sweets.

 

 

They are quite tasty. However, the demonstration of how to create a doughboy made for many laughs because of the inuindo and comments made by everyone watching. It was quite funny!

I complete my blog tonight with a bunch of pictures from today. The snow covered mountains were very far away, but we managed to get a fairly decent picture of them. Also included are pictures from the social and the campfire activities.

Tomorrow we have a couple of tours planned along with lunch out at a local cafe. I hope I can be more detailed in my description of the day on tomorrow's blog. Till then - Happy Trails!!