Doing another road trip! This one is a summer follow-up to my massive journal I did a couple months ago documenting my PCD experience with my new 2021 X7 M50i, and cross-continent road trip from the South Carolina BMW Performance Center all the way back to Alaska. There's 24 pages of pictures, fun, and videos across the entire USA there. That previous road trip journal can be found here:
https://g07.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1803710
If this next trip has a theme title, it'd be something like "Wilderness, glaciers, mountains, and bugs." Decided I was going to use the summer solstice, and nice Alaska summer, to do an inner-Alaska road trip and see some places I've been wanting to get to. This one's to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and the city of Valdez, in eastern Alaska.
Alaska's a massive state, spanning about the lower 48 when superimposed, as you see here. Florida all the way to California, including the state's Aleutian Island chain. So it takes quite some effort to see the whole state over years and years, and even smaller trips like this one takes days, just to get places. (as I said in my previous road trip journal, Alaska's more than twice as big as Texas. Three times as big at low tide!)
This trip went deep into the wilderness, with at least half of it off-grid and out of cell and internet coverage, so these trip posts will be delayed several days from real time.
Day 1 was to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I'll talk more about the park over the next few days, but WRST (as it is abbreviated in the Department of the Interior) is by far the largest national park and preserve in the United States. Bigger than 9 states, and so big that 6 Yellowstone parks could fit inside it. Just getting there is a trip itself, and I would only scratch the surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrange...k_and_Preserve
As before, trip starts from home, but this time in my new X7.
The drive east is rather beautiful, along a mountain range with lots of scenery, along the one solitary eastern Alaskan Highway.
Unfortunately, there were lots of clouds through the trip, and periodic rain, which put a damper on some of the pictures. I guess I'll just have to go back sometime for clear blue skies pictures.
But in the meantime, I'll bombard you with a ton of what I got.
Eklutna Lake is just north of Anchorage.
Highway 1 (there's only a total of 10 in Alaska... imagine if there were only 10 highways in the entire eastern half of the contiguous 48 states) once it turns east, is a mixture of fun turns through highways and canyons, running along rivers, and some long straight stretches.
The Matanuska Glacier is visible from the highway, and can readily be hiked up to.
Very small settlements, or semi-abandoned buildings pop up periodically along the highway, like this:
Alaska has the highest population of licensed pilots, per capita, of any state. Realistically, this just makes sense since a vast portion of Alaska just isn't accessible by road, and unless it's near a coast, you have to fly and/or hike deep into the bush to get there. There's tons of little airstrips like this all over the state, in addition to landing on lakes, glaciers, or ice floes out in the wilderness.
This strip has very typical Alaskan planes parked, too.
Glenallen is the last semi-significant town of any size, before the wilderness and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It at least has a small grocery and a Radio Shack. (I thought those had gone out of business)
Several buildings like this:
Also the last significant gas station before the wilderness. There would be another pump or two before entering the park, but this seemed to be my last chance to get reliable Premium Unleaded gas for a few hundred miles. Filled up to be prepared.
On the edge of Glenallen, Highway 1 tees off. Turn right to take Highway 4 down south to the coast. Turn left to head northeast into Canada.
For what it's worth, the Ahtna are the native Alaskan tribe in this region of Alaska. There are 231 federally recognized native tribes just in Alaska today!!!
Just wish this picture was straight. I might have to get some picture editing software that can do stuff like that.
Just after turning off Highway 4 to head back east towards WRST park.
In the largest national park, bigger than 9 US states, there are only two--count em, two--roads. And even those two roads only go partway into the park. That means the overwhelming majority of the park is true untraversed wilderness. I took the longer of the two, McCarthy Road.
McCarthy Road starts at the tiny village of Chitina (pronounced Chit-nah). This is the last little store before entering the park. I got an extra last minute compulsion to be safe with extra food, and picked up a pack of hot dogs that could be heated up over a campfire.
And then it was the start of McCarthy Road, which deserves some description. McCarthy Road, like Alaska, can best be summed up in one word as "Rugged". The Road is 60 miles long, largely unpaved. Dirt, sometimes gravel. Only partially maintained, and only in the summertime. It takes 2-3 hours to drive the road each way.
The road is built on top of the train tracks that went to the village of McCarthy, just pushing dirt on top of the tracks, which poke up periodically after a winter freeze/thaw cycle and summer rain. It's not for the everyday driver, with several warnings on the park website.
Most Anchorage rental car companies even prohibit renters from taking their cars onto McCarthy Road.
So the first topic for consideration, in trip planning, was whether to even take the X7 on the road. I can see two definite reactions to the idea from X7 owners. The first one would be "Are you crazy? Take my pristine new $100k+ baby through that junk? There's no way!"
The other camp would say "Seriously? You won't even take your powerful AWD SUV on a gravel road? What kind of fragile snowflake car do you drive?"
I thought about it, and decided, hell with it, I'm going for it. This is what the X7 is designed to do. I got the front end and lower rockers wrapped with PPF right from the factory, and the mud flaps have proven to be most functional. I'm probably not even going to take it offroad as much as we did at the BMW Performance Center, although that was a controlled and rather clean course.
There were more warning signs like this, that made me more nervous, but I pressed on.
Just inside the rock gates, there was a sight of typical Alaskans enjoying typical Alaskan recreation staples--camping, boating, fishing, and 4-wheeling. Only thing you're missing there is the hunting.
Looking off the side of the road, readily visible remnants of the train tracks the road was built upon.
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I reserved a cabin at a spot halfway down the 60 mile road. Even still, it took me an hour and a half to do 30 miles of the road, including a few pictures.
That's plenty of pictures for the day, so I'll talk about the lodge with tomorrow's continued adventure.
The nose reflected the strong bug population in Alaska summers.
More trip to come.
