Day 22 The Road to McCarthy

Roy slept late today an advantage to staying in one place.  I woke up about 7 which is late for me.  Walked around enjoyed the morning woke Roy about 9am.  I did post some pictures from the flight over Kennicott Alaska yesterday.

We stopped by a Yak farm, couldn’t take the tour because it would require about a ten minute walk. So we headed to the airport to see the fish wheels up close.  A guy was cutting up the fish and then feeding the scraps to the seagulls.  They just rotate in the water and catch fish in one of the two baskets, they then fall into a holding container.  Then the guy takes them out with a net and kills them then fillets them.  The nice thing about the fish wheel is they can only catchfor personnal use or to barter with.

Sorry for the large picture

Before Chitina there was a cool waterfall called Liberty Falls stopped.  Headed into the big town of Chitina for lunch at the Chitina Motel. The town feels like a Stephen King novel.  Roy had reindeer sausage it was too spicy, I had a yak burger sweet but dry.  After lunch we headed towards McCarthy with a stop on the easement, rock bars to see more fish wheels.  We journeyed through a one lane gorge cut out for the train in the early 1900s. The first bridge we came upon was constructed in 1974 and reconnected McCarthy with the rest of the world.  The railway bridge would was out every year.  This is where the other fish wheels were, we also saw dip net fishing here.  A person uses a big net and slowly swishes it back and forth in the cold water.

We encountered maybe 4 miles of compressed rock where we stayed in the middle to avoid railway spikes.  Then the road became chip sealed, so no real risk of tire damage.  We drove to mile 17 where there is a single lane wooden rail bridge you have to drive over.  It is 293 feet above the gorge, this was the “HIGH point” of the trip.  All in all the McCarthy road did not live up to the hype.  Roy can now say he drove it though.  Tomorrow off to Valdez and oil.