Evelynn Mitchell said:
It is a little more challenging to get into Wrangell -St. Elias since you have
to rent a vehicle that is allowed to drive on gravel roads,
That's a funny thing about renting vehicles in AK. When I was up there
back in the '90s with Nancy Weaver, we rented a car and had to sign a statement
saying we would not take it on gravel roads. Well, if you have ever driven
much in Alaska, you know that that is next to impossible if you leave the city.
There are precious few paved roads in AK to begin with, and those that they do
have are frequently under repair during the few summer months that it is
feasible to do road work. So even the paved roads have long gravel sections or
places where you get shunted off onto smaller gravel roads. We drove all over
the place and took as many gravel roads as paved ones, even getting stuck once.
The car we had was a compact like a Chevy Nova, but we discovered that the
back seat could be laid down and the partition between trunk and seat removed
so that it was, remarkably, long enough for us to sleep in the car. Since it
rained a lot on our trip, we camped in the car often (always off of gravel
roads). We didn't tell and the rental agency never complained, although I
think we did wash the car before returning it. :-)
Mark Minton
