Driving to Alaska

Ever thought about driving to Alaska? I'd highly recommend it, but let me offer some tips based on our experience.

Your vehicle(s) will get dirty. Very, very dirty.

Anything inside a compartment that is not completely sealed will be covered in dust. This includes RV storage compartments and even engine compartments. And you can't solve the problem by keeping a large following distance from the vehicle in front of you that's kicking up dust. It's coming from your own vehicle!

You will hit road construction. Repeatedly.

It's said that the Alaska Highway was built in 1942 and has been under construction ever since. The winters are so harsh and the construction season is so short that there is always something to fix. And these aren't your typical construction zones. There's no "close one lane, block it off with barriers, and let traffic use the other." This is "wait 30 minutes and then follow the pace truck while it leads you inches from the loader that's pushing gravel around."

Oh and there are miles upon miles of highway that need fixing but aren't under active construction.

Welcome to your new normal

The road is all paved. More or less.

It wasn't until 1992 — 50 years after opening — that the last gravel section of the Alaska Highway was paved. That said, there are wildly varying levels of "paved" along the way. There's "paved with reasonably nice asphalt." There's "paved with what appears to be tightly compacted gravel." There's "paved but littered with potholes large enough to break an axle." There's "paved at one point in time but currently stripped down to the gravel bed with no sign that anyone plans to do anything about it anytime soon."

Know your limits.

Know how far your vehicle can travel on a tank of fuel. When a sign says "next services in X kilometers," it means it. It doesn't mean the next town with multiple options. It literally means the next fuel pump. You won't find a random pump before then that they aren't counting because it's so small. Everything is small. The town you get to in X kilometers will be 25 people, but it will have fuel. Fill up when you have the opportunity. This isn't the time to shop around for the best price. You never know what will happen in between towns, and you don't want to run out of fuel in an area where you'll have no cell service and may wait hours to see another driver.

We carried an extra 5 gallons of fuel but fortunately didn't have to use it.

Canada is really big.

There is one way to Alaska by land, and it's through Canada. Canada is not a small country. We entered Canada at Sumas, WA and got on the Alaska Highway at mile 0 in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Using that route, it's 1868 miles to the Alaska border. It took us the better part of a week to make the drive.

To put it in American terms, that's roughly the distance from Atlanta, GA to Phoenix, AZ. It's like driving from Atlanta, GA to Jacksonville, FL every day for 5 days. "But that's not so far," you say. "I can do that in a little over 5 hours," you say. To which I say: No, you can't. See: Road Construction.

There is another route that's slightly shorter, but there was something we wanted to visit that forced us into the route we took. There is also a route that's slightly longer. But really, all of the routes are long. The only shortcut is to fly.

Just enjoy the spectacular scenery, don't be in a hurry, and you'll be fine.

There are a lot of mountains, but the roads go through passes.

You'll cross the Canadian Rockies at least once, potentially twice depending on your route. Despite that, there were no crazy ascents or descents like we faced in the American Rockies. I can't speak for the other routes, but the route we took was no trouble in a big motorhome towing a Jeep. 

Once you are in Alaska, you still have a long way to go.

I'm assuming your destination isn't the border crossing, and if that's accurate, simply getting to the border isn't going to do you much good. You still have miles to go, perhaps hundreds of them, to get to where you likely want to be. Oh, and the road once back on American soil? It gets worse, which means you go slower.

If you can't sleep in your vehicle, plan ahead.

If you have a vehicle that allows sleeping (as we do), you can pull over in any number of roadside pullouts for the night. It simply depends on your comfort level sleeping on the side of a highway, albeit a highway that sees one vehicle every 10-15 minutes! If you are not able to sleep in your vehicle or are not comfortable boondocking, make sure you have places to stay picked out and potentially booked in advance, depending on the time of year. Towns can be hundreds of kilometers apart with literally zero lodging options in between. This isn't a "I'm getting sleepy and should find a place to spend the night" kind of trip.

Boondocking is easy.

If you can sleep in your vehicle, you don't need to book ahead. There are ample boondocking opportunities in Canada. This gives you the freedom to drive as much or as little as you feel comfortable on a given day.

As mentioned above, roadside pullouts (of which there are many) offer ample space for even the biggest rigs (just make sure there are no "no overnight parking signs," but they are very rare). Also look around bodies of water. Almost every river crossing had a pullout on both sides of the bridge, often with a gravel road that led right to the water. Most lakes have a few pullouts next to them too. Boondocking right next to Kluane Lake was a highlight of our drive!

You will have cell service in the towns, even the small ones.

But remember that the towns are not close together. And with few exceptions, you will not have service in between them.

Your credit cards will suffice almost everywhere.

We brought $1300 CAD into Canada with us. This was to cover both the trip to Alaska and the return trip. We used all of it (most on gas) but only needed about $50 of it. Our credit cards were good everywhere we went save for a single RV park that only took cash. And every little town in the middle of nowhere had credit card service.

So if you don't want the stress of carrying around large sums of cash, put things on your card. Just make sure you have a card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees!

The "world's best" cinnamon roll isn't.

We purchased two "world's best" cinnamon rolls, and while both were good, neither topped Cinnabon. But when in the middle of Canada, beggars can't be choosers.

Things will break.

No matter how new or old the rig is, things break in RVs all the time. It's just a fact of life. But honestly, it's kind of amazing that they can withstand the stress of constantly flexing and bouncing while holding together as well as they do. Alas, the roads to Alaska will severely test any vehicle, especially RVs.

The days of needing to carry multiple spare tires are over, but you should expect some casualties either on or in your vehicle. Windshields are a common loss (but can be mitigated by maintaining a large distance behind the vehicle in front of you on gravel sections of the roads). You'll take a few rocks, so paint will chip. In an RV, you can expect screws to work their way loose (hint: check your sink drains). There's just no way to make the trip without putting some major stress on whatever vehicle you are driving.

The mosquitos are no joke.

Head nets are a common sight on people who know what's up. If you don't want to get eaten, your options are to stay inside, apply bug spray (we had great success with 40% DEET spray, but then you smell like DEET), or cover all exposed skin, which means wearing nets. We learned our lesson and have since purchased some.

We didn't encounter mosquitos at every single stop, but they were present more often than not. We had an awesome moose sighting absolutely ruined by a swarm of them.

Brush up on your metric.

When in Canada, you'll be dealing with kilometers, not miles. All speed limit signs and distance signs are in KM (though strangely enough, many landmark signs that deal with height, like mountain peaks, are in both meters and feet). Asher made me a cheat sheet, and I used it constantly.

The fuel prices are obviously dependent on the exchange rate

Modern vehicles will provide a way for you to display kilometers per hour on your dash. I found that to be more useful in vehicles that lacked an analog speedometer. Our Jeep's dash is purely digital, and there it was very useful to have things displayed 100% in metric.

The RV has both a digital and an analog portion. Things like the cruise control speed are digital, but the actual speedometer is analog. Yes, it has metric markings, but they are small and hard to read. So I found it equally helpful to leave the digital portion using standard measurements as I did to have digital using metric coupled with the analog speedometer.

Your GPS probably has a metric mode but should display mph equivalents for speed limits if you choose to leave it in standard mode.

This is a pricey trip.

I'll cover the finances of this trip in a separate post, but all you need to do is use the mileage numbers I provided above, factor in Canadian gas prices (roughly the same as California), and you'll quickly get an idea.

Oh, and you also want to eat and do things on your trip other than consume fuel? It adds up... quickly.

It's worth it.

This is a trip that many people want to do but very few people will ever actually do. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the construction is annoying (to put it mildly). But the scenery in amazing. Stopping to watch a mother bear have a meal with her cubs is wonderful. Yes, flying is faster. In this case, significantly so. But there are things you'll experience on your drive that you simply can't when flying.

And assuming you have plans once you actually reach Alaska, the drive is just the beginning of your adventure!

Boondocking next to Kluane Lake for a night