The day after our fishing expedition, we headed north out of Homer to Palmer, where we planned to spend the night.  There is only one road into Homer and therefore, only one road out.  

Along the way, we stopped at Tanner’s Seafood Market, where I bought smoked salmon that had been candied (or candied salmon) and candied halibut. I had tried the candied salmon once before at Pike’s Market in Seattle and was anxious to have it again. Later we opened both, and while I loved the candied salmon, the candied halibut was even better. I was sorry I hadn’t bought more. By the way, a shout out to Tanner’s Seafood: you can order from them online at tannersfish.com and because it’s cured, it’s not a shipping nightmare like fresh fish is.

We then headed into Palmer for a stay in an Airbnb. It was an interesting little place. The description said it had a few stairs, but it actually had 26, which was two full flights of stairs down a steep cliff with a handrail that gave you splinters! We had to carry our stuff (the coolers, and our overnight bags, etc.) down that. The facility, a little cabin, had an induction stove, a tiny refrigerator, and a microwave in its kitchen. It had a set of stairs upstairs that was almost a ladder, and the tiniest living area you’ve ever seen, but the view from there was really impressive.

Before we left Palmer, we went to a reindeer farm and a musk ox farm. I am glad we did as the musk ox was the only Alaskan mammal that we did not see in the wild. Later on our route, we did see a caribou along the highway, but I was happy to get a closer look at them on the farm, even if it was behind the fence. The musk ox farm was quite interesting, and the interpretation at the farm was very well done. Interestingly, the musk ox is neither an ox, nor bison, nor cow, although it looks like it could be a cousin to any of these.  It is actually more closely related to sheep or goats.  The takin is its closest relative. 

The wool on the musk ox is extremely coarse outside and very soft and dense underneath — which is likely why they can survive brutally cold arctic winters. The wool of the musk ox, when spun into yarn, is exceptionally soft and very expensive. The gift shop at the farm had some for sale. I thought about buying some for a souvenir, but I passed at $250 for a small skein of the wool. I thought maybe that was just “support our work” sort of pricing. Nope, musk ox wool is commonly listed as one of the top five highest priced wools in the world, and the price at the farm was a fair market price.  

The weather was kind of dreary, which had been the situation for the last several days. Our next stop was Denali National Park. We had a very small window to see the mountain and it wasn’t looking good. Doug was great about stopping at every overlook we found in hopes of seeing more of the mountain that the stop before. We made it to the park and had a great look around the visitors’ center and some of the park itself.  There was good signage to help us identify what we were looking at, even if it was behind the clouds

The cloud cover was such that while I have now technically been to Denali, I saw it better from the air in 1996. I need to go back at some point when I have several days to spend so I can watch for the mountain to come out and take the pictures that I want. But when you only have a few hours waiting around, it doesn’t matter because nothing is going to change that dramatically. It was crowded, and all of us who were there were disappointed, but most of us had been warned that it was a possibility. So yes, I’ve checked it off my bucket list, but no, I haven’t really experienced Denali like I wanted to do.

We ventured on from there to Fairbanks, where we had an amazing little house right on the Chena River that was big enough and where we could see steam wheelers and stern wheelers going up and down the river. We also saw planes landing on the river. It was cool to watch the planes land and take off. I never quite got the right picture from it because I was never quite ready when they showed up. Same thing with the stern wheeler. I got the back, but I never was able to get the front because I didn’t know when it was coming, and by the time I could grab my camera, it was gone. The Airbnb was a neat little spot. It had a hot tub, and we were quite comfortable there for three days. It was quite a difference from the previous stay in Palmer.