23 McCarthy on the Way to Haines
From Kennecott on our way back to our RV park (actually a parking lot) we stopped by the old town of McCarthy. This was the town where some of the miner’s families lived, where shopping was done, and where the miners went to partake of the pleasures not allowed in the mining town.
This is one of the old railroad trestles. This line was built to transport copper ore from Kennecott thru Chitina to the port at Cordova from where it was shipped to the Lower 48 for final processing.
We stopped to watch the fish wheels at Chitina, on the Copper River. The sockeye salmon caught in this river as especially prized for their qualities like flavor, Omega 3, etc. Each Alaska resident is allowed to “subsistence fish” which means they can catch a lot of fish for their personal use (to include giving it away or trading, cannot sell it). The fish wheel rotates dipping its net type arms into the river and hopefully bringing up some salmon. These folks we visited did pretty well. The picture in the middle is a bag of salmon hearts. The people we visited with gave us a bag of filets from 2 of the salmon. Enough for 9 meals for the 2 of us. There were many of the fish wheels in use at this location.
From Chitina we headed North and into the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park which encompasses 13 Million acres and is the nation’s largest national park. It is larger than the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. Kennecott and McCarthy are also in this park. We headed into the park on the Nebesna Road and found a great place to boondock for the night. When we parked we could hardly see any mountains due to clouds, haze, etc. We woke up to this view the next morning. The tall mountain is Mt Sanford which, at 16,237 feet elevation is the 5 th highest peak in the U.S.
This is Mt Wrangell, an active volcano.
We met up with good friends Mike and Terri Church in Tok, Alaska. They write excellent RV and camping guide books on many areas, including Alaska.
Some scenes along the Alaska Highway headed towards the road to Haines.
Hope you enjoyed this, hopefully will do another update soon.
