This morning we drove to the end of the Glenn Highway and about 6 miles South on the Richardson Highway to the visitor center for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.  This park is the largest in the park system, is larger than Switzerland, and contains 7 of the 10 tallest mountains in North America.

The kids worked on their Junior Ranger workbooks.  Here I think there looking at what I hope is simulated bear and moose scat:

The visitor center had pelts and skulls of area animals on display:

The kids received their badges:

Outside there’s a fish wheel on display, a kind of water wheel that scoops up salmon as they swim upstream to spawn:

It was too cloudy to see the Wrangell Mountains from the visitor center.  We did a brief hike out to an overlook of the Copper River:

We only saw one colony of these mushrooms, each one the size of a ping pong ball:

The mosquitoes in the forest were plentiful and aggressive.  We walked very fast to stop them from landing on us.  Despite this, M walked behind Trish and swatted them when they landed on her.  These are just the ones that stuck to her shirt.  Yummy!

After leaving the visitor center, we drove North to the Tok Cutoff to overnight at the Chevron in Tok as we did the first time we came through three weeks ago.  See the trip map for driving details.