Monday 15 July
We got picked up by Kennicott Shuttles to do a day trip to the Kennicott Mine near McCarthy. Got picked up by the shuttle at around 8:15 – was supposed to be 8 but got a call to say that the shuttle would be late as the driver had to wake up some campers (4 Germans) as they were not ready for pick up when he arrived. Don’t think the driver was too impressed by his ‘eye rolling’ and body language when he picked us up.
It was a 3 hour drive out to McCarthy, great scenery, saw a bull moose and lots of beautiful rivers, lakes and mountains. The road very quickly deteriorated, and although the shuttle was $100 each, was so glad not to be driving the road. Jason, the driver, knew how fast to go, and ended up driving a bit faster than we probably would have, especially in Larry’s camper.
Got to McCarthy just before 11 (we skipped a toilet stop to make up time), walked over the footbridge and got the 11am shuttle up to Kennicott mine. We signed up for the 2 hour 11:30 Mill Tour, which culminated in us entering the top floor of the mine building, and moving down floor by floor (14 floors in total), looking at all the processes involved in the extraction of high grade copper ore ready to send off to be smelted at Cordova.
After the tour we had a bit of lunch before walking around the rest of the mine site, and taking a shuttle back down to McCarthy where we walked around the old buildings and again got a bit of a feel for what life must have been like for the miners, especially during Alaskan Winters.
The shuttle departed for home around 4:30. Jason stopped so we could walk across the Kuskulana River Canyon Bridge. The Kuskulana bridge was a single-lane railroad bridge 238 feet above the raging Kuskulana River built during the winter of 1910 to service the Kennicott Mine. When it was converted to a car bridge, people had to drive across on 2 boards (one for each wheel) with no side barriers – it was the most nerve-racking part of their drive down McCarthy Road.
We got back to Kenny Lake around 7:30pm and Carla was out at the local community hall where a visiting musical group from Fairbanks was playing so Danika did a great job of frying up the last of the cooked chicken with leftovers, before catching up againwith Carla.
