Alaska! Volume 4

Wherein we visit some parks

Hi friends,

It’s been a very full week! After Deadhorse, we started in Fairbainks and looped our way down through Wrangell-St. Elias and Denali National Parks before ending in…Fairbanks. Let’s get into it!

(This one is long and image heavy. Head to the website and/or the album embiggened photos.)

On Sunday, we drove from Fairbainks down to the Paxson area, where we camped overnight. Paxson is only a 3 hour drive from Fairbainks but we were feeling pretty worn down after the hard driving on the Dalton Highway.

As an aside: we’ve learned it’s super not fun to drive more than about 5 hours a day while camping. Our setup - totes, backpacks, the walled awning, kitchen stuff, sporting goods, etc - isn’t quite where we want it to be yet. Setting it up and tearing it down every day adds up. We’re fine tuning our approach; in addition to shedding gear we don’t use we plan on doing some reorganizing (with custom shelving) when we’re back in the lower 48. I should do a whole post on that.

Anyway, after leaving Paxson we headed towards Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. At 13.2 million acres it is the largest National Park in the US of A. (We were told it’s larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Switzerland combined.) We drove by this park on our way down to Valdez; this time, we turned in on one of the two roads in the park - towards McCarthy and Kennecott.

This road…oh man, this road. It is actively unfun to drive. It was the goldilocks road of awful - rough enough that I couldn’t enjoy the scenery but not rough enough to be fun in and of itself. Just chock full of potholes, frost heaves, aggressive washboards, and constant dust. On the upside, there were a couple of cool views and some old railroad bridges.

That being said, the terrible drive is worth it: it ends in McCarthy. McCarthy is a microscopic town hosting around 100 permanent residents at the base of the Kennicott Glacier. There’s a general store, an old-timey hotel, two bars, a small local art gallery, and an airstrip. A fun quirk of the town is that there’s no public road access…you can drive to McCarthy, but you pay a hefty $275 per crossing fee to get across a private bridge. (Residents pay $400 for a lifetime pass.) The regular folks have to park and take the footbridge. We took the footbridge.

“Map not to scale…not even close!!!”

The town itself is fantastic. We found a small cabin for rent - with electricity, but not in the outhouse - and walked back into town for some food.

McCarthy is definitely on our list to visit a second time the next time we’re in Alaska. Even if we have to drive there.

The next day we got back across the bridge and drove back up to Paxson Lake, and eventually, Denali National Park. We picked up a three-night pass for Riley Creek Campground at the start of the Denali Road. The road is only publicly accessible for about 15 miles; after that you have to take a bus into the park, which we did.

Bonus points if you see the grizzly

Our bus driver - Tim - has been driving the Denali Road for 26 (!) years. He knew everything about everything. There were grizzlies, caribou, Dall sheep, and various birds. Unfortunately, the road is currently washed out around mile 45 so we “only” got a 4.5 hour tour instead of the usual 12. It was a neat experience in any case.

The next day - our last in the park - we did some whitewater rafting on the Nenana River. For obvious reasons I did not get a single photo. It was still very awesome. We capped off a great week by eating a ridiculous spread at 49th State Brewing…if you get a chance, nab their crabby grilled cheese.

That brings us to today. We’re in Fairbanks for a few nights to see the sights. We’ll be heading back into Canada and south toward Seattle. It’s been real, Alaska.

See y’all out there!