July 22 - Anchorage, AK to Talkeetna, AK - 260 miles

Today was a day to look around north of Anchorage, and make a little progress toward Fairbanks.

We first rode to Palmer, about 50 miles, and went to a "Musk Ox Farm", since we had seen a write-up on this in the AAA tour book.  It was very interesting, with about 50 Musk Ox, and it is a farm to produce "Qiviut".

Qiviut is the very soft under-fur that insulates musk ox so well in weather down to -100^o F.  For its weight, Qiviut is eight times warmer than sheep's wool.  It is combed out of the musk ox coats in the spring, and then sent to an eastern textile factory to make yarn.

The purpose of all of this is then realized by sending the yarn to native Eskimo people along the northwest coast of Alaska, to give them an industry of knitting scarves, caps, sweaters, etc.  These items are fairly expensive ($210 for a scarf), but are much finer than vicuna, cashmere, alpaca, camel hair, or silk.

Anyway, it was fun to see the musk ox.  (They are not really related to oxen, but are related to goats! - Our guide said they are the biggest goats in the world - females up to 800 pounds and males up to 1,200 pounds, and they have survived largely unchanged for 600,000 years.)

Then, we wanted to ride up the scenic Matanuska Valley, and to see the Matanuska Glacier (between Deane and Norm's motorcycles).  

At first, we thought we'd seen so many glaciers, why another one?  However, we were glad we rode that extra hundred miles, because viewpoints along the road higher than the glacier allowed us to see it snaking between several very high mountains.  Other glaciers may be as long or longer, but you can really see this one.  

The Matanuska valley is the one that produces the giant vegetables, and we saw one example of a huge cabbage at the Musk Ox Farm.

Finally, we rode up to Talkeetna, which is a stop on the Alaska Railway between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and a real tourist town.  Talkeetna is a main "jumping-off" point for Denali (Mt. Whitney) expeditions.  It has many competing activities for sale, such as hiking, river rafting, and flight seeing.  Here we visited a friend of Norm and Kay's, who works at the FAA Flight Service for the area.

Fun day!

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