Fireweed Festival

Today I went to the Fireweed Festival in historic Copper Center, Alaska. The curator at the museum, Andrew, was nice enough to invite me to go with his wife, Wendy and their three year old son Henry. It was raining as we left Valdez, but luckily the rain cleared as we arrived in Copper Center.

The festival was small, with lots of little tents set up where people sold food, arts, and crafts. We walked around and stopped at all the booths to see what people were selling. The owner of a local bar who is also a model train builder also gave us an insiders tour of his model, which was huge! The tracks wove through several buildings, and there were models of the Kennicott Mine and other historic Alaskan buildings. Henry especially loved it and seemed to be mesmerized.

Part of the train model

We ate lunch at the Copper Center Lodge, an historic roadhouse along the route from Valdez to Fairbanks. After lunch, we checked out the Copper Center Museum and separate Annex. The museum was small, but they had some interesting objects on exhibit, including a snowmobile from the 1950's, iron cramp-ons used by the gold-seekers to cross large glaciers and ice fields, and lots of other gold rush related objects.

Copper Center Lodge

Copper Center Museum

After hitting the museum, we went to a art gallery owned by local painter Jean Rene. Andrew talked with Jean about her upcoming exhibition at the Valdez Museum, which will open in September of this year. I loved looking at her work, and ended up buying a beautiful watercolor painting of a little cabin with fireweed flowers growing all around.

The Wonder of Summer by Jean Rene

We left the gallery and started the drive back to Valdez. I had a great time today, and enjoyed seeing another Alaskan town. The festival was fun, and now I have a great piece of art to bring back with me.