McCarthy, Alaska

We went to an old mining town in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park called McCarthy. The last part of this trip took us 60 miles down an unmaintained gravel road. We were warned to take a spare - some people even went as far as to say that we WOULD get a flat tire. The road turned out not to be that bad as long as we took it slow, and the difficulties were well worth it. We saw fish wheels along the way, which folks build to scoop up salmon swimming upriver to spawn. The town of McCarthy was great. You had to walk across two foot bridges to get there, and the only things in it were a small hotel, a restaurant, a bar, and a flight-seeing company. Visiting was one of the highlights of the trip.