Wrangell St.Elias National Park, 14-16 Sept 08

As it was with everywhere we've been in Alaska, we didn't spend nearly enough time in Wrangell St.Elias Park. We looked at the salmon fishing setups on the Copper River at Chitina, and marvelled at the size of the fish! The fish are caught up in a revolving net system, which is far kinder to the fish than our hook in the mouth (hopefully) way of doing it in NZ. We drove the 100 odd miles in, past Chitina to McCarthy/Kennicott, on another dirt road. Way more potholes on this one though, and our RV bounced and lurched the last 59 miles. We camped at the bottom of the Kennicott Glacier, right by the river, and were lulled to sleep by the sound of the rushing waters. Neville saw a bear while he was out walking the glacier and wished he'd taken the bear spray. I went out walking too, and saw some bear scat, full of berries. Wished I'd had the bear spray too, but did sing and holler a bit, so it'd have known I was there! We went the 5 or so miles to the Kennicott mine the morning of the 16th Sept, before setting out on the drive back to Anchorage. Neville ran the 5 miles – I think he felt he'd had a good workout at last, after all the sitting in the camper.