Valdez and McCarthy Excursion

There is a road, Highway 10, coming off the highway to Valdez that goes to an old town called McCarthy. The road is almost 100 miles long, of which 35 miles or so are paved. So here we go again, another long drive on a dirt road. How could we pass up such a wonderful opportunity. So we drove the road to McCarthy.

On the paved beginning of the road we were surprised to find many mail boxes along the road with driveways that went way back off the road. Ahead of us, the Wrangle Mountains were absolutely awesome the way they jutted up out of the landscape. Our photos just do not do justice to their grandeur.

At least we didn’t get skunked on the wildlife and got some photos of a pair of trumpeter swans old eagle eye spied off in the distance. In addition to the usual rabbits and squirrels, we also saw a bald eagle fly by quite low. The road was paved to Chitina and just beyond Chitina we passed through a one-lane cut through what seemed like solid rock. That is one-lane, not one-lane each way. This turned out to be a common theme on this particular road.

Laura and DR both have a pretty healthy case of acrophobia (fear of heights). Whenever possible we drive so that we don’t have to look down the shear cliffs at the edge of the roadways, often without gaurd rails. On this road, we encountered a bridge over a very deep chasm. Mind you, this bridge was built in 1910. The roadbed is made of timbers hopefully because timbers are better somehow. The real issue though is that it is a single lane bridge, as in one-lane, not one lane each way. We white knuckled our way across the first time, but coming out we distracted ourselves by trying to take a video of the crossing. Which kinda worked. Here’s the video.

There were several large lawn estates along the shore of several of the small lakes along the road.

At the end of the road you had to cross a pedestrian bridge and catch a shuttle into the town of McCarthy. Unfortunately, we arrived after the last shuttle had ran and the information booth was closed. A sign said $5 for overnight parking, but there was no one to pay the fee to. So we pulled into one of the few available spaces in a very crowded gravel parking lot, intending to pay in the morning.

We both woke up early and DR really wasn’t up to a lot of walking, especially in a crowded tourist trap town. The booth was still not open. So we split without paying the overnight parking fee.

We drove back to Highway 4, the main highway to Anchorage and headed for Anchorage. DR got tired and we pulled over into a large pullout and settled in for the night. While we were having dinner a First Nations family of a man, a woman, and 10ish young boy parked their pickup near us. The father and son slung guns over their shoulders and they all headed into the brush. The father returned some time later and drove off in the pickup.

We slept well and were ready to resume our trek in the morning.