Movin' On Down the Parks Highway

I haven't posted for a couple of days mostly because we haven't done much. When we left Talkeetna, we only drove about 70 miles down the road to an area called Big Lake where we found a park on Rocky Lake with only 12 sites right on this pretty, but small lake. Our site was on the lake, the sun was shining and there was only a light breeze -- heaven! John got out the kayak and went fishing while I read and basked in the sun. But then the wind kicked up, the sun went behind a cloud and it got cool in a hurry! Even the fire wouldn't keep us very warm. On top of that, some young adults across the lake were having a great time water skiing and tubing -- at 11 at night! Remember the sun is still shining as sunset is a little after 11:30! The nights are getting a little longer but it still never gets dark.

Thursday morning we pulled out and drove about 30 miles to Wasilla, Sarah Palin's home town, and the 4th largest city in Alaska with a population of 7,900. We stocked up on groceries and I did 5 loads of laundry (we were really getting short on clothes to wear!).

As the weather today was rather gloomy, John got caught up on computer work and, in the hopes that the clouds would lift in the afternoon, I planned our day trip over Hatcher Pass. We had to backtrack up the Parks Hwy. about 25 miles before we got on the pass road. The first 12 miles were paved, then it was gravel but not too rough. Unfortunately the weather was still very cloudy so we didn't get to see any of the mountain tops we were driving thru. The road followed Willow Creek to its source at Summit Lake then went down the other side of the pass. We are told that the views are wonderful, but not today. On the other side of the pass was the Independence Gold Mine Historic Site.

This was the richest gold nugget mine in Alaska from 1937-1949. They mined rock gold here as compared to flakes of gold found at Dawson Creek, Yukon. The parks system is working really hard to restore as many of the buildings as possible and to keep the site from deteriorating further so as to preserve our history. Bunkhouses, the mess hall, commissary, warehouses and a few other buildings have been restored although not for public entry. The signage told the story of the mine and the many men who worked there. Because it was such a rich mine, they were able to provide many amenities for the people. They used 1,000 gallons of fuel a day to generate the power to run the mine; they employed a water way to move the ore, used an electric train to get the rocks out of the mines and even had an aerial tramway to move the rocks from high up on the mountain. We really enjoyed this piece of history.