Relyea'sAdventures: 8-13-2013 A Surprised Flight-seeing Adventure over Kennicott

We all slept well that evening at the lodge and were ready to do our last exploring of Kennicott and head down to the town of McCarthy. This little town 5 miles down the road was built to support the mining operations at Kennecott. There was no drinking in the Kennecott camp. McCarthy sprung up at the “entertainment” camp. Again, there is not much there today, a few old building and the Museum.

We enjoyed looking at the artifacts, old pictures and discussing the history with the young lady who volunteers at the museum. She and her husband are working and living in the town of McCarthy. He is a pilot who flies for one of the charter flight operations. They had been living in a tent until she took the volunteer job at the library/museum. Then they were given a cabin for the season to live in. Says she only worries about meeting a bear on the trail up to the cabin in the woods. This entire area is completely “off the grid” with both towns running on generators with limited water supply. During the winter, the very few that remain, have to go 5 miles down the road to a stream to get their water.

As we were about to depart the Museum and head back to the car for trip back to the RVs, the girls began talking to a lady that had just came back from a flightseeing excursion of the glaciers. She mentioned that she had gotten the flight at half price by using the Tour Saver coupon books you can purchase in the state. We had purchased one when we had arrived in Fairbanks. Don and Joy had ordered theirs before coming up. Many of the coupons are buy get one free. It really is a great deal if you are coming to Alaska. We have used several of the coupons for different excursions. We had even gotten the kids train tickets at half price when they road up from Anchorage and paid for the book with that one usage.

Needless to say the abrupt change of plans did not go over that well. The girls called and had gotten reservations for 3:30 that afternoon. It was 12:30 so we had a few hours to burn. The lodge had prepared sack lunches for us to eat on our return trip, so we drove down the road and found a cool place to relax and eat lunch. There was a road side parking spot with picnic tables and a shaded area. We ate our lunches and relaxed. Bob decided to take a walk alongside the road. On the way to the lodge he had spotted an old railroad spike alongside the road but we did not stop to pick it up. Bob stewed most of the way to the lodge and became more determined to find another railroad spike. He thought that a little piece of history would be a great souvenir. After scouring the woods for a diamond willow stick, which is native to Alaska he settled for an old aspen stick as his walking cane. He headed down the road. After about an hour he came strolling back with not only one but two railroad spikes. He was a happy camper after all.

So guess what, we all went flying to see many of the glaciers up close and personal. It just so happened that the pilot we had was the young lady’s husband from the museum. We mentioned we had met his wife so he took extra special care of us.

I don’t know if we can, or would attempt to, describe the awesome sights that we saw or even pick the appropriate pictures to fully share the sheer beauty of what we experienced. I do not know how many pictures were taken between the 4 of us but I can tell you that it took a lot of disc space on the computer hard drive. We hope that you will enjoy the pictures and try to image being up close and personal as we were.