Golden Spruce Cabins Wrangell - St Elias National Park and Preserve

... for the day was Nathan, who by coincidence had been our guide yesterday on the mill tour. Nathan fitted us with cramp-ons and checked to see that we had everything needed: hat, gloves, sunglasses, lunch, rain pants and jacket, and enough layers to keep warm. The glacier is about 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding area. We stowed the cramp-ons in our day packs and proceeded with three others on the 2 mile ...

... Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.<br><br>Although you have probably never heard of this park, it is the largest US National Park. At 13.4 million acres, it is somewhat larger than Switzerland. Four major mountain ranges meet here; it is named after two of them. It contains 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the United States. One of its glaciers is larger than Rhode Island. Along with Kluane National Park in Yukon, Canada, it contains the largest ...

... it produces beautiful waterfalls, and we sure saw lots of them today. Stopped at every scenic viewpoint listed in the Milepost. It took us four hours to drive 90 miles.<br><br>The campground had electric only; the other people in the campground were Alaskans here dip-net fishing. After plugging in the RV, we drove the ...

The morning tour to the ice museum began at 9. It's so cold inside! 20 F, so even with glove, scarf, everything, twenty minutes' still too long. But it's extraordinary. It's dark inside to prevent the ice from melting. So the pictures are not clear. <br><br>AFTER the arctic ocean mission, the trip resembled more ...

Night at the Copper Center Lodge. They have THE best sourdough bread and pancakes I've ever had. It's a must stop, just for the food. The rooms themselves are okay. Very basic lodging and the bathroom creeped me out a little but H was fine with it. But then again this is a historic Alaskan roadhouse, not the Princess Lodge. We tried to convince ourselves to get on a plane and do the ...

We are staying just outside of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This is the largest national park in the U.S. and only has two roads into the park. We took a trip all the way in the road which goes into the park from the west. This is the Edgerton-McCarthy Road. The first 33 miles are paved and the next 60 are dirt. With this in mind, we opted to pay for van trip into the park. McCarthy is the jumping off point for those who wish to ...

As par for the course, we found clearing skies and no rain as we closed the trailer and said "Good-bye" to Valdez. The nice weather did allow us to get some better pictures along the Ric******* Highway, which has some very nice scenery. Our drive was just about 100 miles so we were set up in the campground early, got some lunch and set off to visit the little town of Chitina. This little town is at ...

... of water like gulfs, fjords or lakes.... but in pure terms of appreciating the geological phenomenon of a glacier, then this must surely be one of the best locations for evidence of a glacier's raw power in moulding the earth. Here in Wrangell, ear the two old-style mining towns of McCarthy and Kennecott, the entire countryside has been moulded by the ice. It's so comfortable to simply walk around the giant mounds of earth, over dry river beds full of ...

... is closed and thats it your left on your own. So after touring around for a bit I finally found the right Highway just before almost ending up on the Military Base. I decided to stop for coffee and some breakfast in Sutton just over an hour from Anchorage, I ate a Breakfast Sandwich with a reindeer sausage, it tasted really good altough Im embarrased to say I ate ...

... from Fu Kung. Good food, but overpriced (as is most of the stuff here). Now I've finished renaming all of the pictures and I'm getting ready for bed. It's only almost 9:15 here, but I'm beat. We were in the car for about 10 hours off and on today. Saw some more awesome scenery though, so it was worth it. Still no black bears or moose or Dall sheep, but that's ok. We did see porcupine roadkill, so it wasn't a totally wildlife-deprived day :-) Hope you enjoy the pictures...