Copper Country

Corinne Alaska, National Parks & Monuments 2 Comments

It’s time to explore Alaska! Let’s go. We had no specific plans and no reservations. It’s still early in the season so it turns out you really don’t need reservations right now. We pulled out the map and decided to head south.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

What’s the name of that park again? Wrangell-St. Elias? Never heard of it.

That was our first thought. It turns out this National Park is the BIGGEST National Park in the National Park System. “The park is the same size as Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Switzerland combined!” And it was on our way southward.

This National Park boasts the fact that it goes from the ocean all the way up to 18,000 feet in elevation at the peak of Mt. Wrangell. It contains four mountain ranges, a whole lot of glaciers, and an abandoned copper mine and mill (processing plant).

The park is a paradise for hikers and adventurers. For those of us whose extreme adventuring days are over, we decided to drive the 50 mile dirt road up to the old copper mine and mill.

The road surface wasn’t bad, certainly better than the Alaska Highway. Road crews were out with road graders smoothing out the surface.

Our destination was McCarthy and the Kennecott Mines, about 5 miles away from McCarthy. You can drive up to the edge of McCarthy, but then you had to get on a shuttle to get to the mill that serviced the copper mines.

The only reason the road to get this far into the park exists is because copper was discovered in the region in the early 1900’s. Investors were found and a railroad was laid down to get to the source of the copper. The road we drove in on is the abandoned rail bed.

You can’t visit the mines, but you can visit the Copper Mill that was built to extract the copper from the limestone. So we pulled out the wallet and paid for the tour.

We walked UP HILL to the top floor of the 14 story Kennecott Copper Mill. Our trusty guide led the way. Once we reached the top, it was all downhill. Thank goodness.
Did I mention we had to dress for the occasion? For safety reasons, we were all given hard hats. I thought it was just for show. I was wrong…they were needed. Some of the stairways we descended in the mill had very low hanging beams. Ouch.
To be honest, the tour was a bit of a disappointment. Our guide was nice and kind of knew what she was talking about. But we heard too many statements like “the stuff came down the thing.” If you are going to give a tour, use the correct terminology. It probably didn’t help that we had a couple of young mining engineers on our tour. It was interesting being in a building abandoned in the 1930s when the mines petered out.
This display caught my eye. The children were gathered for “an Eastman Kodak party, at which each child was given a Brownie box camera.” An Eastman Kodak party??? As ex-Kodakers, we had never head of such a thing. But it was true!
The view out one of the windows. Note that lumpy brown stuff between the mill and the mountains in the distance. Read on to hear why the mill workers never saw this view.
It turns out the mill and mine were on the edge of a glacier. What you are looking at here is some glacial ice covered with a lot of stones and dirt. But aren’t most glaciers at least somewhat white?
Off to the left, you could see the toe (or end) of the glacier.
Where the Kennicott Glacier (different spelling!) and Root Glacier meet at the site of the copper mill, a lot of “glacier till” is churned up from the glaciers meeting. That, along with glacial ice melting and leaving behind more glacial till, the glacial ice is dirty indeed and really can’t be seen.

AND….apparently during the time the copper mill was active, this glacier was actually 300 feet higher. The workers couldn’t even see the mountains in the distance. Thus the view out the aforementioned window would not been as dramatic. That is definitely some glacial melt.

Enough copper mill talk….the drive to McCarthy and Kennecott had some moments.

Moose! This one was pretty close to the road.
This grizzle bear was a surprise. He was just sitting in the road. We stopped the vehicle to watch him. He turned around, gave us a glance, and ambled off into the woods.
Our final wildlife sighting was in Chitina at the end of the day. We were starving, so decided to stop at a food truck (lots of them in select places) and placed our order. We hopped back into the truck (it was chilly out) to wait for the food to be ready. And along comes this moose. What! This was not anywhere in the National Park and it was a pretty busy area. Mr. Moose took off before our food was ready, we weren’t going to share anyway. I remarked to the food truck owner that a moose was in the area. He shrugged it off like it was not big deal and said “Yeah, and they have been feisty this year.” Yikes!

After a couple of days poking around the area of the National Park, we decided to head to salt water.

Valdez

The town of Valdez (pronounced Val-deez) is the southern most ice-free shipping port in Alaska. It is on Prince William Sound.

Blue pin = Valdez

To get to Valdez, we had to go past the “avalanche area” signs and over Thompson Pass.

Wait, is that snow on the side of the road?
Why yes it is. This picture was taken on June 1st!
It was a scenic drive to get the Valdez. There were a large number of waterfalls.

Valdez is known for a few things.
– Being an ice free port, all the copper and gold found in this part of the state all made its way to this port to be transported elsewhere (mostly Washington State).
– The town was very close to the epicenter of the Good Friday,1964, 9.2 magnitude earthquake that hit the region. 32 people who where on the town dock when the earthquake hit were killed. The land under the dock dropped off into the sea and took them with it.
– The town is the termination point of the Alaskan Oil Pipeline. Oil that comes from the north eventually ends up here in Valdez where it’s loaded onto an oil tanker.


– Remember the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill? Those of us of a certain age certainly do. The oil slick never reached Valdez, but Valdez became the command center for the cleanup in Prince William Sound. Some of the town folks are still unhappy about how Exxon handled the clean up of the oil spill.

We got an excellent campsite right on the bay.
From our windows, we could see the Marine Oil Terminal and the oil tankers taking on oil on the other side of the bay.

Valdez gets 64 inches of rain annually. I think it all fell during the time we were there. It was non-stop rain. Remind us to check the weather forecast first, next time we decide to visit Valdez. The locals weren’t fazed by the weather. We didn’t enjoy it. The town is probably absolutely stunning when you aren’t dodging rain drops.

The downtown area was very picturesque.
Main Street, very cute. However, imagine this street full of cruise boat tourists. Meh.
We visited a salmon hatchery, but it’s the off season, so no exciting pictures. Although James got a kick out of this sign. What the heck do you do if this sign lights up????
At points. we could see the Alaskan Pipeline from the highway.

So, what did we do in Valdez? We wanted to see the fishing boats come in. We saw none. Which meant we didn’t see the bald eagles that would come in to feed on the fish scraps. And that does happen…we were talking to another couple last night that were in Valdez a week before us. They saw lots of action. I have no idea why we didn’t. A fishing boat holiday????

What did we was eat. And eat. And eat some more. Valdez is a foodie town. Cruise ships come in (although not during our stay there…that could have been some entertainment) and the local restaurants love it. I did reach out in the RVing to Alaska Facebook group that I mentioned in a previous post and we met up with Ginny and Rick from Virginia for a beer. It’s always fun to swap RV stories. We made our own entertainment.

And now, we are back in Glennallen, near where parked to visit the National park. We drive to Anchorage tomorrow to pick up Janelle for her week’s visit in Alaska. We have some fun stuff planned.

Today was a rest day….time to catch up on life. James has taken a couple of walks. I wrote this blog post, paid bills, etc. This is not a bad place to spend a day. As far as Alaska campgrounds go, if you can get 30 amp power (50 amp is better) and get your big rig into your parking spot without a lot of issues, it’s 4 out of 5 stars. With a stream and a picnic table, this place is 5 out of 5 stars.
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