Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Ever heard of this National Park?  It is the largest in the USA, 13.2 Million Acres, created in 1980, and has only 2 roads into the park.  On Monday we came back here by leaving Valdez and traveling north on the Richardson Highway,

then we went east on the Edgerton Highway to Kenny Lake, a total of less than 100 miles for the day.  We got a parking site for 2 nights, allowing us to catch a 15-passenger shuttle bus into the park to the end of the road early Tuesday.  This road has about 30 miles of pavement and 60 miles of gravel on top of an old railroad line. 

This is about a 3 hour trip that ends in a parking lot.  After crossing a pedestrian footbridge, we caught another shuttle for about 5 miles to the Kennecott Copper Mine.  We spent most of the day there, returning to the RV park about 730PM.

A tour guide described the geology, chemistry, and history of this area as we walked through the company town and up a hillside to the top of a 13 story processing building.

The ore came down from the mines at higher elevations here to be ground up and separated from the limestone it was found in.  The copper ore was bagged and transported to the coast by rail, then by steamship to be smelted in the lower 48.  The guided tour led us down inside the old buildings, following the path of the ore as it was processed.  When the ore played out, the mine closed in 1938, and most all equipment was left behind since the cost to salvage it was more than it was worth.  The Power Transmission distributors Bob used to support would have got a kick out of seeing this 1900-1910 level of technology.

Here in Kenny Lake we have no radio (AM or FM), no TV, and no WiFi.  Except for cell phones and texting we are almost “off the grid”.  On Wednesday we plan to head back north to Tok on the Alaska Highway, near where we entered the state.  We had Internet service when we were there just over a month ago, so we will post this note then.