Day 58: Nabesna Road, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
Mostly cloudy and chilly.
The Nabesna Road has been anticlimactic.
The Nabesna Road of Wrangell-St. Elias is a good representative of Alaska: inaccessible wilderness. I get that we are preserving our wilderness, and the way to do that is to keep people away. Then don’t give us a road of frustration. The road goes through lowland and you need ATVs for most of the trails and boots for the rest. It does have a beautiful view of the Wrangell Mountains when it is clear in the morning. Luckily, we were able to see the view.
The park boasts it is larger than Switzerland and the mountains are taller, too. Go to Switzerland. You can drive or take a train or ski all around the mountains. They probably don’t have mosquitoes either.
Go to the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or Yellowstone. You can GET IN the wilderness. Those parks have people problems but they are doing their best to solve them, and the typical traveler is able to enjoy God’s creations.
To be fair, WSE is open to berry and mushroom picking, fishing and subsistence hunting. We just didn’t bring all the equipment we needed to get out more. An airplane would have been real handy to see those beautiful snowy mountains.
This is our last week in Alaska. Autumn is coming. Perhaps we are mentally preparing to leave. Sigh.
The leaves are turning colors.
This has been going on for about a week. I first noticed last weekend in Wasilla that the birch trees there were an orange-brown color.
Having nothing else to do in WSE, we are on our way to Haines, where we will board the ferry south. The route to Haines goes through Yukon, Canada. We found a beautiful free campground not far from the border to spend the night.
Arvitrekking 
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