Kenny Lake, AK, getting ready for 4 days up in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The Salmon run has started here- just one weekend for this type of salmon-

and they can only be caught using dipnets from shore or boat and only by Alaskans- native peoples can take more fish. And apparently, some people forgot to move their campers away from where spring high water could reach!

This is the biggest park in the US- bigger than NH and VT together, but very difficult to access.

A 60 mile drive on a gravel road to McCarthy where there is one tiny campground which sits on a glacial moraine- we had reservations. Along the road was this huge bridge over river, with a suspended walkway under the bridge that, of course, we just had to get to!

Once in McCarthy, one must walk down the hill to the footbridge to cross the river into McCarthy. Only locals have vehicles on the other side- which they bring over by paying to use the one lane private bridge down stream from the footbridge. In McCarthy there are 3 restaurants, a small grocery- but it has hard ice cream! a jewelry store, and two outfitters. Free range dogs and kids everywhere, too. You can take the shuttle up to Kennecott 4.5 miles up the valley.
Kennecott was a HUGE copper mine in the early 1900s- mining very pure copper in the millions of tons over 30+ years. The town was a “company” town and housed about 550 workers for the mine and mill. McCarthy was down the hill and supplied the workers with leisure activities- a saloon and women!
We took the mill tour which included inside looks at several of the buildings-

The National Park Service has restored, replicated or conserved many buildings.

The tour took us up to the top of the 14 story mill and brought us down through it stopping at each level to see how the copper ore was processed. This building is pretty much as it was in the 1930s except for safety and stability work.

The views are pretty spectacular, to say the least. The pic on the left is an “ice fall” , a part of the Root Glacier, 1000s of feet tall, a frozen waterfall of ice that is part of the glacier. The pic on the right is off the glacial moraine- ice and rock and gravel 100s of feet thick for several miles along the valley at Kennecott- two glaciers merge here- Kennecott and Root.