The McCarthy Road back to Chitina, AK

Well, I woke up yet again to the sound of rain. Maybe this is just a daily thing that I’m not used to. It was quite chilly and windy as I gathered things up and hit the road mentally wrapping my head around another 4 hour drive on a pothole washboard road. I stopped along the railroad trestle site as I blew past it on the way down. Finally the rain stopped, and I got some decent photos of the astonishing trestle bridge, and it was just amazing standing underneath it, looking straight up at the vest spans of this structure, and to think it went on for many miles. It’s a bit sad that the structure was allowed to decay, as I imagined train rides into McCarthy and Kennecott would be a major tourist attraction, but all good things seem to come to an end. I carried on with another sighting of two trumpeter swans, and as I stepped out to take photographs, I was engulfed with crazy mosquitoes. These, I feel, in particular were waiting for me to come, as I must’ve been a feast for their eyes. Good thing I still have the cutter spray and the oil repellent as I am dousing that in a scarf and wearing it around my neck. Plenty of curse words go on as I try to kill all of them one by one.


So, after nearly 4 hours of jiggles, like perfect clockwork, I came across the site I stayed at four nights ago, and it was open, waiting for me, so I carefully backed it in, as it’s a bit tricky, and here I sit getting rocked around with fierce wind and chilly temperatures, but gorgeous with puffy clouds and peering sunshine setting shadows on this river, which is actually fuller than it was four days ago. There’s been a lot of rain. I spent some time in complete solitude as I cooked up another breakfast omelette, and wrote up, not only this portion of my blog, but also my entry regarding entertaining conversation stories about McCarthy and Kennecott. What a hoot!

























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