We Went Into Nowhere and Then Couldn’t Get In

What a long day. As I said yesterday, we went into one of the visitor centers in the largest National Park in the US, Wrangell-St. Elias. We knew we would take the 60 mile gravel road that would take us to another section of the park where we could access a tour bus today to see more of the park. Sounds like a plan huh? Well it was, but not all plans go as planned.

Let me begin by saying we only drove about 67 miles out of the way to go the Chitina where we would leave the RV and take Hooptie the rest of the way. We knew that it would take about 3 hours, yes 3 hours, to go the 60 miles because of the road conditions. That was OK with us. We are here in Alaska and want to see and experience as much as possible. We also remembered what Rodger, a Capt we met at Kirtland AFB, said about this National Park. He said he thought it was prettier than Denali. So we were in for the ride. This road was in need of much repair. We are OK with gravel roads, we understand the pits, pot holes, and wash boarding. So, with that being said, I say again, this road needed repair. This drive though offered either no scenery at all, just stubby Black Spruce trees that grow up here in the tundra, or really pretty views of mountains, rivers, lakes, ponds, flowers, ducks, and balanced rocks.     It was definitely an either/or situation. We were also fortunate to see fish wheels on the Copper River.    

Ok, we get to mile marker 58 of 60. We saw 2 women working on a sign. I turned around after we passed them and saw them taping up a note. After about 2/10 of a mile it dawned on me what I saw on the note. Road Closed. What? Road Closed? That is the road we just came in on. That is the only road in. That is the only road OUT! We quickly banged a u-ey . Yup, the road was closing in 30 minutes and they were hoping it would reopen Friday or maybe Monday. This is Wednesday. WTF? No notice what so ever? We did notice one of the bridges that we crossed had a sign up saying closed to truck traffic because of damage but allowed one car at a time to cross. Well, the DOT in their infinite wisdom decided to close the bridge to all traffic with no warning. We asked the woman who was taping up the sign what if we don’t make it back before the bridge is closed? Her answer, I don’t know, we are already here. Great! And really helpful too! There is the small town of McCarthy that is only accessible by foot path since there isn’t a road that leads into it. Maybe it has a hotel? OK, we need to high tail it back to mile 42, 18 miles away in a half an hour. We have been averaging 20 miles an hour to get here. Poor Hooptie, we were hitting pot holes, weaving around them the best we could. The wash boarding was making our teeth chatter. We got to the bridge and a DOT worker was there. He told us that the bridge was officially closed but would reopen in a few days. We told him we knew nothing about the closing, our RV was on the other side, and we would not know what to do since we are not from here. He was kind enough to let us cross.      It wasn’t 2 minutes after we crossed that a bulldozer with 2 concrete barricades was coming up the road. We made it by 2 minutes. No exaggeration! Had we not seen that sign when we did and if we hadn’t abused Hooptie the way we did, we would have been stuck. So much for the park and so much for seeing McCarthy. We took a really really long road to nowhere and couldn’t get in but we did get out just by the skin of our teeth. True story!