Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor Center

When we left to complete the last leg of the Richardson Hwy., we intended to turn off the Richardson Hwy. onto the Tok Cutoff Road and head back to Tok. However, since we were so close, we decided to drive a little farther south and check out the visitor center at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Good move!! If any of you ever make a trip to Alaska, don't miss this national park, the largest in the nation! It's not as well promoted or advertised as Denali or others in the "lower 48," but well worth any time you can spend there. The visitor center is informative and attractive . . . we got there too close to closing to take full advantage of all they had to offer, but we saw an excellent video about the park showing footage of much of the park that's inaccessible, heard a talk by a park ranger, looked at some of the exhibits (not as much as we would have liked, but we were short on time), and took a short hike. The park has many hiking trails but we just chose a short, easy one. Still beautiful!

View from the back of the visitor center overlooking the Copper River valley with the Wrangell Mountains in the background

Trail through the boreal forest

A fish wheel, a traditional method of catching fish on the river

More views from the back of the visitor center

The hiking trail we took

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Because of the excessive rain this year, the forest ranger said there are many more mushrooms than usual in the forest. They're huge! Ernie's foot to compare the size . . .