The McCarthy Road ends at a river, where you park your car unless you feel like paying $200+ to use the new, private bridge (if you're going to be driving over it a lot, an annual pass is only $1500 or so). In the winter, you just drive over the frozen river, but before the private bridge, there was no way to get a car over in the other seasons, so you had a car on each side of the river if you wanted to drive. Though there's plenty of land here, there isn't plenty of parking, so you end up with a steep little parking bill when you visit McCarthy, with parking going for $5-10/day. From the parking areas, you walk over the (free) footbridge and then hitch a ride into town on a (not free) shuttle, or walk the half-mile to McCarthy. It's another four miles to Kennicott, so I was impressed by the number of people who walked there instead of taking the $10/person shuttle.
Despite the expense involved with transportation, I thought McCarthy was charming. It's pretty run-down and only somewhat fixed up for tourists. There was a foal wandering the streets, and some horses tied up to trees. There were lots of dogs accompanying their people around. And, yes, there was some trash, but not the candy wrapper kind of trash. It's expensive to get things to McCarthy, which means it's expensive and time-consuming to get them out, too. Cars and appliances have their own special rusting-away spots, but some people found alternate uses for their large consumables... like this garden in a truck. It's one way to make a raised bed.
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