Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

You are probably going to yourself, "WHERE IS THAT PARK?"  Honestly, I had never heard of it either until Onions and I drove by the visitor's center on the road to Valdez. Upon arriving in Valdez, we decided to make the trek into the park on our last day and night!

The park has it's main road lead to the town of McCarthy, population 40 (?).  It's a 62 mile unpaved road.  The start of the McCarthy crosses the Copper River.  Yes, of Copper River salmon fame!  Aargh, those clouds never lifted during our visit.

Upon reaching the end of the road, we are in the town of McCarthy and looked up to see half the mountains and the Root Glacier.  I'm imagining the spectacular mountain scenery being hidden by the clouds.

5 Miles up the valley on the hillside is the buildings of the former Kennecott Copper Mine. 

So the Kennecott Copper Mine was in operation from the 1900's until about the start of WWII.  The town of McCarthy, five miles down the road, thrived as a place of "leisure" for the workers.

Here's the town today, about how it looked back then.

We were lucky to find a place to stay last minute by making some calls. Most places in the McCarthy area were full, but the last place I called had a cabin open.  I highly commend this location.

Our cabin!

The six cabins and the home of the owner is powered by solar panels.  It's an amazing set up here.  The clouds....damn.

On our last day in Alaska, we took the shuttle from McCarthy to the Kennecott Mines area.

The National Park Service took control of the area in 1998 and is slowly restoring the buildings.  Some have been refurbished an others are still in a state of decay.

So much fun to walk through this town and imagine what it must have been like to live and work here. 

The power plant!

The Mill Building, where the magic happened.  The only way to get into the building itself (14 stories tall) is to take a paid tour.  We would have liked to but due to time constraints, weren't able to. However the visitor's center movie was quite informative on the copper extraction process.

My favorite photo. 

The reason we skipped the tour was that Onions and I opted to go hiking a couple miles to the Root Glacier.  This is the Kennecott Glacier that we passed along the way.  It's just covered in glacial outwash.

There it is!  The Root Glacier.

Walking ON a glacier.  It happened.  Finally.  The great thing about the Root Glacier is that you can just rent some crampons and walk right up the face of the toe and hike up the glacier, just like the people behind me. Alas, time constraints.

We saw that the meltwater from the Root Glacier ducked under a section of the nearby Kennecott Glacier so we went down to check it out!

Ducking under the glacier, this was the most AMAZING surprise.

And from here we began the journey home.  A two mile hike back to Kennecott, a 5 mile shuttle ride to the car.  A 7 hour drive to the Anchorage Airport. Three hour flight to Seattle, a two hour layover and then another hour and a half flight to San Francisco.  Got home, one time, without incident.  What a fantastic trip to Alaska.

Valdez

After the 5 hour drive along the Denali Highway (max speed is 35 MPH!), our instincts told us to head south back to the coast along the Richardson Highway and end up in Valdez.  Yes, that Valdez made famous by the oil spill in 1989.  The map in the guidebook didn't have the little symbol indicating it was a scenic highway, but the last 20 miles into Valdez is SPECTACULAR.

After a couple of miles of amazing mountains, we turned the corner and then the Worthington Glacier.

After the Worthington Glacier, one climbs up into Thompson Pass.

Even after a week of snow-capped mountains, the scene doesn't get old.  I would still just stare in awe at how close the mountains were, how accessible they looked.

The end (or start) of the Richardson Highway....Valdez, Alaska.  This could be called "New" Valdez as this current location was selected after the original location was destroyed by the Great Good Friday Earthquake of 1964.

After dinner (I had a tasty halibut burger), Onions went back to the B&B to rest and when I went out for toothpaste, the blue skies started to show up and so I went around town to take photos.

The next morning we had tried to book a kayaking tour but the tours were full, so we ended up at a couple local museums.  The first showed off the collection of items a woman had purchased from indigenous people throughout Alaska.  Somehow, that didn't feel right for some reason.  What I did appreciate was a chance to see some animals up close.  Not sure if I should be ok with that.

The second stop was the Valdez museum. I was surprised that the spill was only a very small part of the museum exhibition.  I learned that the city has a proud gold mining history and fishing history as well.  Makes sense.....every city needs to be proud of and honor their history beyond the tragedies.

This was the weather the day we wanted to go kayaking.  So, lucky the tours were full?  This is looking across the bay from Valdez to the oil refineries.

The refinery "up close."  And then we headed out of town.