Palmer Colony Days 2023 (06-10-2023)

BB and I have been to Palmer several times. (See 12-12-2002 post, Alaska Christmas: Palmer Colony Christmas).  The town has a small-town, main street feel that appeals to us.  When we talk about the possibility of coming back to Alaska the two cities we mention most are Palmer and Sitka.

Palmer has been holding the Colony Days Festival since 1936.  It is a three-day summer festival that celebrates the city’s roots as a 1930s New Deal farm colony. Events include a 5K run, bed race, a carnival, arts and crafts markets, historic walking tour and parade.  We attend Colony Days on Saturday so we can see the parade.

We are in Palmer by 10:00am, an hour before the parade is scheduled to start.  We park on a side street near the Palmer Depot.  We check out the Festival of Flowers at the Depot.  There is a raffle.  BB purchases tickets.  I don't think we have passed on a raffle since we've been here.  The raffles are usually for a good cause.  We keep our losing streak (Raffles:8 Us:0).  

BB fills out her raffle tickets.

There are several pretty prizes.

We stake out our spot on the street in front of the depot and wait for the parade.  The empty spaces around us fill up with parents with young children. The kids have bags to hold their treats like at Halloween.  The majority of the parade participants throw out a giveaway, usually candy.  These kids are ready!

Passing time playing with reflections.

Anticipation!

Here comes the parade!  Quite a collection of participants!  

Animals.

   Turtle and Snake from Jonathon's Reptiles.

   Horses.

   The Bernese Mountain Dog Club.

 

All kinds of vehicles

Local Clubs and Organizations.

    The Denali Destroyers

After the parade we wander the Outdoor Market.

Then make our way to the Palmer Museum of History and Art to join a historic walking tour.  The walk includes the Colony House Museum, Colony Inn and Church of a Thousand Logs.   At our first stop, a monument dedicated to the families of the Matanuska Colony next to the Library, our guide gives us a brief history of the colony;  how the families were selected, how they traveled to Alaska and what they found when they arrived.  She also explains how the town was named.  At the time the colony was formed the post office was officially named Warton.  Several suggestions (Valley City and Farmington) for renaming the post office were rejected by the USPS because there were so many other towns with those names.  The USPS accepted Palmer after George Palmer who had the local trading post.

Our guide.

Monument to the Colony families.

In the Church of a Thousand Logs.

After the walking tour we have spinach bread for lunch.

Then we stop to pet the reindeer.

Palmer has a Dairy Queen!  We get treats for the ride home.

 

BB remembered that St. Nicholas Orthodox church is in Eklunta, a Dena'ina Athabascan community.  We pass Eklunta on the way home.  We stop to visit the church.  This ADN article mentions that there are plans to restore the older church building.

New Church.

Old Church.

From the ADN article:

"There was this duality of traditional (Orthodox Christian) belief and Dena’ina shamanism, Dena’ina traditional beliefs,” said Leggett, who noted that Dena’ina tradition was to cremate human remains, where in Russian Orthodoxy the body had to be buried.

This duality can be seen today in the spirit houses that Eklutna is famous for — small, brightly colored structures covering gravesites near the church. These houses give the spirits a place to go, honoring Dena’ina tradition while at the same time following Orthodox beliefs."

Now home.

Sal

An Alaskan Nugget: The Brown/Grizzly Bear and more pictures

The experience at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge was fabulous.  Our guide Brooke loves the bears, and watching them go about their day, playing, foraging, mothering, watching you watching them, you couldn’t help but fall in love a little bit too.  There is a distinction between grizzlies and brown bears here.  I read up a little more, and here’s what I learned.

Alaska is home to 98% of America’s grizzly bear population and more than 70% of the population in North America.  They get their name from the “grizzled” (streaked) blond-tipped fur on their shoulders and back.  Brown and grizzly bears are classified as the same species even though there are differences between them, most notably location.  Brown bears typically live along the southern coast of the state where they have access to seasonally abundant, fat-rich salmon, as well as clams, sedge grass and other vegetation.  In contrast, their grizzly cousins, living in the northern and interior parts of the state and lacking the bountiful salmon runs, forage mostly on grasses, berries, roots, trout from streams, and they will prey upon moose and elk calves.  But because the bulk of their diet is vegetarian, they are smaller than the browns living on the coast.  Coastal brown bears and polar bears are actually the largest bears in the world.  At peak body condition, boars (males) from interior areas may weight up to 600 pounds while boars from coastal areas may reach 1,500 pounds.  Sows (females) usually weigh half the weight of males in any region. 

In addition to variations in size, inland grizzlies seem to act more aggressively towards other bears and humans, most likely due to a less abundant food supply and the need for a more extensive home range.  Brooke explained the abundant food supply and 40+ years of non threatening bear viewing in this part of the park is what allows the bears to go about their activities with humans and other bears so near.

We saw the Three Amigos, three young bears who enjoyed hanging out together; we watched Crimp Ear with her two cubs making their first appearance before humans, and they were curious about us; Cub Killer, a big boar whose name is self-explanatory, was spotted multiple times; and Little Davy, a three-year old named in honor of one of the lodge guides who had been away from the park for months and was missed by his friends.  And others.  Altogether we saw 12-15 different bears. We watched them playing/wrestling, lying on their backs stretching (so funny!), a cub’s hissy fit when he wanted to nurse and mama in no uncertain terms telling him “not now!”, lots of vegetation chewing, Cub Killer, with mating on his mind, stalking the sows and multiple bears on the beach digging for clams.  How do they know where to dig?  With their keen sense of smell, they can smell them buried in the sand!

It was amazing to be in their space.