Edgerton Highway / McCarthy Road

With Turk expected to remain in the hospital until Saturday, but improving daily, I made a quick solo trip to the McCarthy / Kennicott area. Access to the Edgerton Highway is available from the Richardson Highway in two places. The northern point puts you on the old Edgerton Highway alignment - a good gravel road, until you meet up with the real thing in 7 miles at Kenny Lake.

From Kenny Lake it's 26 miles of classic Alaskan two lane asphalt, complete with the requisite frost heaves and views, to the town of Chitina. I spotted mother moose with a calf on the way but they didn't hold still for a picture.

The 60 mile gravel road to McCarthy starts on the outskirts of Chitina (about 2 blocks from the center of town) with the narrowest part of the whole road. Most of the McCarthy road was built on top of the old Copper River & Northwestern Railway right of way, thus the narrow cut here.

Within a couple miles of Chitina the road crosses the Copper River where there were a number of fishwheels in operation.

The road was certainly passable by any motor vehicle, but was narrower and not as well maintained as the Dalton. It had been oiled in places but clearly hadn't seen a grader this year with more washboarding and chuckholes than I experienced on the Dalton.

The highlight of the road was the Kuskulana Bridge. It was built in 1910 for the railroad with the roadbed 238 feet above the river.

I couldn't resist the view from a different angle.

The speed limit was posted at 35 miles per hour but someone clearly thought that was too optimistic. Much of the time, I thought the speed limit was pretty appropriate.

The other piece of engineering that attracted me was the Gilahina Trestle. It was over 800 ft long and 90 high, incorporating over 500,000 board feet of lumber in its construction. It was built in just 8 days, in January 1911 and is just one of the over 270 trestles used on the 170 mile route. It's now showing the impacts of wood rot and gravity.

The land along the route varies between National Park land and private land with quite a few private homes or cabins scattered along the way. This building may have been associated with the railroad which shut down in 1938 when the Kennecott* mine closed.

At the end of the road, at least for visitors rather than residents, is a parking lot ($5 per calendar day or $20 per night for camping) and a foot bridge to the town of McCarthy. Much is made about the rough road and the need for full-sized spares, but this car in the parking lot didn't seem to read that note.

Next up - McCarthy, with Kennicott / Kennecott to follow.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back - Updated

Regular readers know that our Turk was attacked by a Bullmastiff while BJ was at the Chena River State Recreation Area Campground in Fairbanks on the evening of July 2nd.  The vet at the emergency clinic did surgery to repair five broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a flail chest wound and kept him overnight before returning him with instructions to follow up with a regular vet on Friday following the holiday.

The regular Fairbanks vet checked his wound and confirmed his medication and care regiment, removed his drain tube and his IV port, and agreed to see him again on Monday morning before we left town. With his approval on Monday we rolled south.

We continued to experience episodes of significant serum seepage from the incision although a phone consultation with yet another vet concurred that this was normal and that we should leave the incision exposed to the air to facilitate healing.

Yesterday morning we had an appointment with the vet our son uses in Eagle River and went through our concerns with continued episodes of serum leakage, typically from one of three places along the incision. After a close inspection, the vet removed all the stitches and we took Turk back to the trailer with a smile on our face.

Within a couple hours, Turk once again expelled serum from the center of the incision, followed by the realization that I could hear him breathing through the small gap in his incision, aka a sucking chest wound. A phone call to the vet led to chest x-rays where it was obvious that his left lung was collapsed although his pulse ox was reasonably good.

Consultation suggested our best option was to transfer him to Pet Emergency Treatment in Anchorage where they put him in an oxygen cage and arranged a consult with a thoracic specialist, followed by a surgery to figure out what wasn't holding and healing.

This morning we went back to visit him and were able to take him for a walk outside although he was still a bit groggy.  The surgeon trimmed some rib ends that weren't healing, flushed his chest, and did some new internal stitches to replace those that had been originally placed in tissue that then died - apparently common in dog bite cases.

He'll be staying at the hospital until they confirm the lung is fully inflated, that drainage is within normal parameters, and remove his chest tap - likely a couple more days. They're pleased with how he's responding - he even cleaned up his plate!

7/17 - Turk continues to improve but they want to hold him in the hospital until Friday afternoon. Given that, BJ is going to stay in Eagle River and I'm going to take the truck for a long but quick trip to McCarthy. Should be back by noon on Friday. Don't expect any blog updates until Saturday :-)

Seen Around Talkeetna

A Visitor Center for Talkeetna is located at the junction of the Talkeetna Spur Road and the Parks Highway. It was closed and didn't look very active

but we managed to find the town by following the map.

Lots of other people had also been successful finding the town, but they were all walking down the street because they couldn't find the missing sidewalks. They were apparently successful finding a parking place - we weren't.  Lynne told me it would be this way, but...

We did find a grass airstrip with no parking, a different asphalt airstrip that is the base for planes flying tourists and climbers to Ruth Glacier, 

and the lake where the float plane tours are based.

We found a place that purported to have the answers

but still couldn't figure out how they get this plane out of its shelter.

Talkeetna looks like a town that might be fun to walk through, but it really doesn't work well for vehicles pulling trailers.