Denali – Page 6 – On the road with Jim

McCarthy/Kennicott/Kennecott – Alaska

If you ever fly into Alaska and rent a car or motor-home, there will be a clause on your contract that forbids you from driving on certain roads. The first is the Dalton Road to Prudhoe Bay, the second is the road to Chicken, and the most notorious is the McCarthy Road, and it’s infamous for a good reason. The builders never meant it to be a road.

Kennecott Ore Processing — The massive multi-story building processed ore from the mines and loaded it on train cars.

In 1900, two independent prospectors discovered a large copper deposit on the mountain above the Kennicott glacier, later tagged as the Bonanza Hills. Much political wrangling went on over the next ten years, and investors formed a publicly-traded company, except the person filing the papers misspelled the glacier’s name. Today, if you’re talking about the glacier below the mine, it’s spelled, Kennicott. Otherwise, anything to do with the mine is Kennecott. I’m glad to find out that I’m not the only one who flunked spelling classes.

Kennecott Power Plant — This building supplied the power needed to process the ore.

Getting back to the road, the company needed a way to get ore down to the Cordova port. Like any good corporation, they started another corporation to build a railroad and named it the Copper River & Northwest Railroad (CR&NW). Detractors used the initials to call the investment “Can’t Run & Never Will Railroad.” However, the scheme worked and ran successfully for twenty years before copper prices plummeted, and in the thirties, the company closed the mines.

Kennecott Shift Manager's House — Although small, most of the wood detail in the house is exceptional. I wonder how the manager would have reacted to the building leaning in his window.

Years pass, and someone salvaged the rails from the track, but there’s still a historic old mining site upriver from Chitina that could draw tourists. So, some brilliant entrepreneur dumps gravel over the ties, and that becomes the McCarthy Road. During its early years, the discarded spikes tore up a lot of tires. Since those are collector’s items now, they’re not as big of a problem. The road covers sixty miles and, on a good day, takes two to three hours to travel.

Kennecott Processing and Bonanza Hill — The processing plant towers over the town with its complex architecture. The mountain that supported this ingenuity is in the background.

The problem now is that engineers never built the road for automotive traffic. The road is not maintained well, so it is full of ruts and potholes; there is a frequent blockage due to rocks and mudslides, there are no shoulders, and the road runs through bogs. The road is essentially one lane wide, so cars passing need to give way. This year alone, there have been two incidents where a motor-home has pulled over to the ‘should have been a’ shoulder and needed rescue. Last week, one just flopped over on its side, and on my trip, we called a hook for one listing thirty degrees.

McCarthy Hotel — Whereas Kennecott was a company town, McCarthy was the place to let loose. There is still a functioning hotel there—good luck in getting a reservation.

OK, I cheated. I hitched a ride on the scheduled shuttle bus. It cost a lot less than calling a tow truck and the wear and tear on Fritz. Even though I thought the Chicken Road was worse in hindsight, I still felt it was the better choice. I only had enough time to work before the return bus and couldn’t hang around for the perfect light. Unless you want to pay $250.00 for the private bridge across the Kennicott river, you have to walk or take the shuttle up the four and a half miles to Kennecott anyway.

McCarthy Groceries Meats and Hardware — If you couldn’t buy it here, it was probably up on Silk Stocking Road.

If I were to make the trip again, I would consider paying another hundred dollars to McCarthy Air and flying from Glennallen to McCarthy. Then I wouldn’t even need to walk over the footbridge the park service built. To land at the McCarthy’s gravel field, you have to circle a couple of the mountains and come in over the glacier. That would be cool.

Glennallen – Alaska

At the intersection in Glennallen, you have two choices. To the right the road leads south to Valdez. A left turn will take you north back to the Alaska Highway. Other than that, there isn’t a reason to come to Glennallen which is an unincorporated community consisted of an overpriced gas station, an RV park and a Laundromat. So why did we spend five days here?

Mount Sergent Robinson — The Chugach Range is south of the highway and can easily be seen across the river as you drive.

Let’s back up and start with the Glenn Highway, the road we took to get here. Mile for mile, it was the most scenic road we’ve traveled in Alaska. Starting in Palmer it’s an easy three-hour drive, climbing from near sea level to a pass almost four thousand feet before descending into the Copper River Valley.

The colors in Gypsum Mountain are the result of volcanic cooking. Normally gypsum is white, but iron deposits have rusted the gypsum.

The climb out of Palmer follows the Matanuska River as it cuts a path between the Talkeena Range to the north and the Chugach Range on the south side. It’s hard to see much of the Talkeenas, but the wide river basin really makes it perfect to see the mountains and glaciers lining the south side of the road; each more photogenic than the last.

Then at the head of the climb is the Matanuska Glacier, the river’s source. It’s bright white ice flows north from the mountain for miles before curving west at its moraine. The massive ice structure is easily visible from the highway and if you take the time, you can get access to the glacier from the side roads.

Anne and I got an early start, thinking we’d stop for breakfast at the first café we found. There wasn’t one open until we reached the Eureka Lodge on the high pass. When we stopped we had to put jackets on to ward off the chilly wind. After enjoying ham and eggs the way God intended, It shocked me to find that the price of my coffee was only a quarter, and our meals were equally reasonable.

Sheep Mountain — When you stop at a place called sheep mountain, make sure to keep your eyes peeled, you may spot Dall Sheep. In this case, my long lens was able to turn the white dots into white dots with legs.

That brings us back to the choices at the Glennallen intersection. While you make a decision, you may want to look straight ahead. In front of you are three snow-capped mountains. The apparent tallest is Mt. Drum, but it’s only 12,011 feet tall. To it’s left is Mt. Sanford (16,237), and a bit south is the much broader active volcano, Mt. Wrangell (14,163). It’s then you’ll know that you’re at the western border of the Wrangell – Saint Elias National Park. It starts on the other side of the Copper River below you. It is the largest National Park in the US. At over thirteen million acres, it’s the same size as Yellowstone National Park . . . and Switzerland combined. It’s elevation ranges from the sea-shore on its south side to Mount Saint Elias which is over eighteen thousand feet. It is the largest concentration of plus fourteen thousand foot mountains in North America.

Enough statistics for now. Let me sit here for five days and see how much of it I can shoot. There are only two roads that cross the park’s boundary. Both of them are bad, but one I plan to take this week.

Freddy’s Place – Alaska

Many camping neophytes don’t know of the alternative RV campsites. By that I mean the places you can stop and sleep for the night without paying. The most well known is Wall-Mart. As long as you don’t block the front doors and don’t set the parking lot afire, you’re welcome to spend the night in their parking lot. When you’re on the road, it’s comforting to know that you can rely on those places in a pinch.

Last night we accepted such hospitality at Fred Meyers. That’s a northwest supermarket chain you may know as Kroger. We call them Fry’s at home. We were in transit from Seward to Glenallen and needed to find place to sleep. The Fred Meyer’s places (at least in Alaska) allow you to stay overnight in their parking lot. Since we were in transit for a day, we accepted their hospitality.

At first, we felt like we were imposing, but from our perspective, it was wonderful. We went to the service desk to make sure that it was ok to camp in their lot. The manager assured us that it was ok as long as we didn’t block the front entry. They then added, “You will be moving first thing in the morning, won’t you?”

In all, it was a wise decision to stay. We learned a lot about Palmer by walking its streets that evening, and we found out that they have a steam whistle that blows at five o’clock. It happens the whistle was at the fire station across the street from our parking spot . . . Thank God I was already on the pot; I’m forbidden from telling you what happened to Queen Anne’s pants.

Except for the paperboy who owned the loud rice-rocket delivering papers at 3am, the night was actually quiet and we slept in until eight. That’s when the morning whistle went off. Then I got up with my dopp kit and towel draped over my shoulder and started to march into the store to shave and brush my teeth.

“Sir; you can’t come in here dressed like that!”

“These are my best cowboy pj’s! What’s wrong with them?”‘. . . Don’t ever argue with a box boy.

Anyway, our thanks to Freddy’s, especially for keeping the store open til 10pm so that we could make a Cherry Garcia ice cream run. That got us through the night . . . Not to mention the morning coffee and doughnut fix.

Half Empty Glass – Alaska

We’re still in Palmer even though Deb, Fred and Sally have moved on to the Kenai Peninsula. We will meet up with them on Friday. We got Fritz back from the dealer yesterday, after getting the worlds most expensive ignition switch installed. This morning, I took him to the shop for a lube service. I wanted him ready for the long drive home. He’s logged over 5000 miles on the odometer so far; already more than half the scheduled trip, but he’s been on a lot of side trips.

Boat on the Cook Inlet — A wooden boat sits dry in the salt marsh on the Knik River arm of the Cook Inlet.

This is always the time on vacations where I get melancholy. The vacation is already half over. Although there is a lot of traveling left, we’re still on the downhill run. After planning ‘the trip of a lifetime’, I hate to see it come to an end. As I said, there’s more than a month before we get back to the stress and rigor of retirement. We still have so much to see and do.

There’s a line in the Dan Fogelberg song Nether Lands that best explains this confusing feeling I have: “And where do you go when you get to the end of your dream?” I’ve already learned the answer to that question. It’s another quote from the movie Finding Nemo. The line is Dory’s, when she says “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”

My ‘swimming’ technique is like an astronaut coming home from the moon (This is actually how I got through school well before astronauts). I need to focus on getting the landing right, but I stare blankly out the window and let my mind wander. Eventually, another hair-brain scheme pops into my head and (my last quote of the evening is from Tag Team); “Whoomp! There it is.”

Anchorage – Alaska

Since we have some down time, and the dealer gave us a beater loaner (complete with cracked windshield), Anne and I drove down to Anchorage yesterday. My friend Jeff sent a link to a local food truck, so we decided to check it and the town out.

We missed the Babycakes truck. Either I read the schedule wrong, or they couldn’t make it. Instead we ordered a Cuban sandwich from one of the other vendors. With a slice of ham, a slice of pork, cheese and zesty pickle on a pressed Panini bun, it was tasty. There was a second truck selling baked good, so we indulged in a cupcake parfait; that’s where they alternate layers of cake with icing. We needed a good walk after that.

K Street Eatery — Anchorage has several sites where local food trucks can set up and sell food. The trucks rotate from one site to another. We took advantage of the K Street place for lunch.

I wanted to check out the street made famous during the 1964 earthquake. The newspapers and TV showed how one side of the street sunk a full story. There was far worse damage elsewhere, but that image remained with me. The area affected was along 4th Avenue between C Street and E Street.

Anne's lured into the Kringles Store. — Anne’s lured into the Kringle’s Store

While we walked the sidewalk, I remarked that this part of town reminded me of the road next to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. It’s at the edge of downtown, nearer to the port. It had all the trinket shops and the cruise ships sent busloads of tourists as part of the tour. But I didn’t see a single place to eat seafood. There were plenty of bars, but no salmon, no crab, not even a sushi restaurant. Evidently, Anchorage knows that this is high on the sightseeing list, because the Hard Rock Cafe is at the end of the block, but it needs more local seafood.

South Side of Fourth Avenue — The south side of fourth avenue has a mix of building styles. It’s kitschy but at least has some charm.

The other observation that I made was the street had a split personality directly related to the earthquake. The south side of the street has the original buildings, a mix of old storefronts, bars, with an occasional log building here and there. The north side buildings that sustained most of the damage were replaced with two reinforced concrete structures designed in the 60’s. They act as a shopping mall, but there are few tenants. The owners painted the west building bright yellow, while the east one is purple. Inside of the west building we found the walls plastered with news clips and explanations of what and how the earthquake damaged the surrounding areas. Since the epicenter was in Valdez (an unknown little fishing village at the time), it will be interesting to see how it recovered.

Fourth Avenue's North Side — It was the north side of Forth Avenue that sank one story. Those buildings were replaced with two commercial building that serve as shopping malls. They are conspicuously devoid of tenants.