Copper Center, AK – Let me start with the good: this campground is perfectly located for fishing on the banks of the Klutina River, which has some of the best King and Sockeye (red) salmon fishing around. The river is literally a 1 min walk from your site.
Fishing access on the Klutina River is only one row of campers away
The bad: it’s not suitable for large class A motorhomes, despite being told (by the person at the campground we called) it was. Just making the left turn into the campground took everything we had: tag axle dumped (which shortens the wheelbase, making the turning radius smaller), scraping tree branches getting as far to the right as possible before the turn, using all of our 60 degree wheel cut to make the turn and then scraping more trees at the end of the turn. The entrance was clearly not designed with big rigs in mind.
Entrance to King for a Day is a u-turn
Then came getting into our space, site #1, the only pull through in the campground and billed as “premium” for large rigs. Ha! This was by far the tightest space we’ve ever attempted, and the smartest thing would have been to leave upon seeing it, but we couldn’t because there were pick-up trucks, trailers and ATVs parked everywhere in a random and haphazard fashion. So we went for it. There are trees on either side of the space that captured all of my attention, for good reason, as we had 2-3″ of clearance to spare. Unfortunately there were also stumps and roots that I couldn’t see, catching the generator exhaust pipe with the former and the passenger side rear tire with the later. Luckily, Karla was spotting and saw these. She was able to remove part of the stump to get the exhaust pipes through. I don’t think we did any lasting damage to either, but only time will tell.
Stump was catching exhaust pipes, we removed part of it
The site was tight, a big rig could not put out most slides
Then came hooking up to 30 amp electric, which provided only 105 volts on a 120 volt outlet, which is exactly 1 volt above our surge protector’s shut off limit (104 volts). Note that most parks’ voltage is between 118-121, so this is quite aberrant. And yes, I’m a data geek and collect this sort of data. Don’t judge. Next up was finding the fresh water connection, which involved tracing the water hose a good 30 feet before finding a spigot in the bushes — a spigot that I think is for our site, but I’m still not sure.
Egress from our site was looking particularly difficult Saturday evening, but by Sunday morning people starteddeparting and we made it out with a modicum of ease (sorry everyone for the incessant beeping while in reverse, I had to back up a while to make the turn).
The Fishing, by Karla
My first time Pacific Salmon fishing & first time fishing at 10pm
The best part about this campground and the reason I had booked it, is the onsite river access to the Klutina River, which Mike mentioned above. Unfortunately, our timing was a little off, but these things are hard to predict in advance. There had been a few fish coming through in the preceding days, but it had slowed down. King salmon fishing did not start until July 1, but the Sockeyes (reds) were in season. I gave it a solid attempt, but did not land any fish. I was in good company, as neither did any of the other fishers along the river including the bald eagles. I was really impressed by the speed of the current. This is a fast flowing river. It was cool and a little weird to be fishing at 10pm, as sunset wasn’t happening until about 11:30pm and then it still doesn’t get very dark.
I did get a chance to talk to other anglers. We were mostly all fishing with flies. I learned that it is not uncommon to use 50-80 lb test braided line for salmon! I may have to upgrade my line. They suggested the area under the two nearby bridges to be the most active.
Rating: 
(for big rig suitability) 
(for fishing suitability)
Website: King For a Day
