Driving to Alaska and Back: "The Alaska Highway"

I am writing this post from the utterly charming city of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Grab a cup of tea or glass of wine and get ready for another looong Alaska Road Trip recap! You can find all of my posts about our trip here.

By the way, I love writing these posts so much. Thank you for reading, wherever you are. When we are on the road or camping or exploring, I don't work on the blog, but when we both need some time to relax after a long drive, it's the perfect thing. In the background as I write this, Grace is watching a National Geographic special on TV, Willie is sleeping (and running in his dreams the way dogs do), and I'm typing away. It's raining and hailing outside here in the big wild Yukon and oh so cozy.

But I need to back up a few days.

My last post, about the Canadian Rockies, ended with us spending the night in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Dawson Creek is known as "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway, which stretches from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, Alaska. It was built during WWII for the purpose of connecting the contiguous United States to Alaska (pretty wild to think that before that, there was no direct way to drive to Alaska. There just weren't roads! And there still aren't roads connecting many parts of Alaska.). Since we got out of the Canadian Rockies, we have followed the Alaska Highway the whole way, and it will take us straight across the border into Alaska.   

The Alaska Highway is the wildest place I have ever been. Just for context . . . I have been on safari in Botswana. Hiking in rural Turkey. Slept under the stars next to a volcano in Chiapas. I know I have a flare for the dramatic, but nothing (from my personal experience & travels) compares to the Alaska Highway in terms of remoteness.

It is stunningly beautiful. It weaves through British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska (the last of which we haven't gotten to yet, as of the time I'm writing this), and the landscape truly is "Larger than Life." That phrase happens to be the Yukon's motto (on all the street signs), and it's perfect. I'm not trying to knock other beautiful places in North America, but the Yukon and Northern British Columbia just makes anything else look miniscule. For example, I'm from North Carolina, and we have the world-famous and gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains. The fall foliage there is amazing, and the mountains are mysterious and serene-looking. While I will always love my home state . . . the Yukon's mountain ranges and fall colors make the Blue Ridge Mountains look like a toy train set version of the landscape. I just can't imagine anything that can compare to the sweeping views and VASTNESS of the Yukon. I can't describe it adequately and a camera can't really capture it, so you just have to go and see it for yourself!

Grace and I spent a lot of time today in the car wondering why we have never heard of anyone taking a vacation to the Yukon, even though it's jaw-droppingly, tear-jerkingly beautiful. We figured it's a couple of things. One, it's so very remote. And two, there isn't really anything here other than the landscape (plus Whitehorse, which is an awesome city that I have fallen in love with).

The Alaska Highway is also no joke. I can see how very quickly, the remote terrain would become terrifying if you had car trouble or got stuck after dark. Just to paint a picture for you, it is often six full hours of driving between "towns." And a "town" often consists of one gas station, a Tim Horton's (sometimes they don't even have that), a motel, and an RV park. About halfway between "towns" there is usually some type of gas station. We haven't been in any danger of running low on gas, but yesterday, right as we got about 30 minutes into our drive, the check tire pressure light came on in the car. We had a 6 hour drive ahead of us to the next town. Honestly, my heart was in my throat for the rest of the drive. It all worked out, but it's scary! I should add that while I have a Canadian cell phone plan, I have 0 cell service for 5 or 6 hours out of the day when we're driving. My phone will just say "no service" for the whole drive. There are also no street lights for hundreds of miles. I said a lot of silent prayers (not wanting to worry Grace) that we wouldn't blow a tire in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. We usually see another car maybe once ever 15-30 minutes. Okay, now I've probably convinced you never to do this drive, haha!

But seriously, I would recommend this trip to anyone with the right preparation. It's been surreal and inspiring and beyond my wildest dreams. We keep saying that we feel like we're on safari. We've seen reindeer, bison, elk, moose, coyotes, bunnies, and tons of beautiful birds. Sadly, we also saw an enormous black bear that was roadkill. But even that just illustrates how larger than life it is here--even the roadkill is HUGE. The only way you can "get it" is by doing it.

Reindeer on the highway

So you might be wondering, where actually DID we sleep at night if it's so remote? I'm going to break it down for you, which I hope will be helpful if anyone is thinking about planning a similar trip! I know I scoured these types of recap posts when I was planning ours. All accommodations listed below are pet friendly (a couple people have asked . . . we don't have Willie as a service dog or anything like that. We just stay in pet friendly places--they're not hard to find!).

Dawson Creek, B.C.: We stayed at the Stonebridge Hotel. Room service food was DELISH. Comfy, would 100% recommend. Really nice people working there. And, huge plus, an amazing and enormous *free* brekkie buffet starting at 5am. We loved that.

After Dawson Creek we drove to Fort Nelson, B.C.

I don't want to be a downer or dissuade you from staying in Fort Nelson. For one thing, there's really nowhere else to stay between Dawson Creek and Watson Lake (both of which were great stops, but they're about 12 hours apart, so you pretty much have to stop in the middle which leaves you with Fort Nelson).

We did not love Fort Nelson. Unfortunately for us it was just kind of one flop after the next as soon as we rolled into town. We stayed at the Sunrise Inn and Suites. It is pet friendly and has great reviews online which is why I booked it. I booked by emailing directly with the owner, who was very friendly. Fast forward . . . we pull up to the "inn" and no one was even there. We finally reached someone by pressing the buzzer which I guess was connected to a pager (?) and she said she'd be there soon. When she got there she was clearly flustered that we wanted to check in. She tried to call another hotel to get us a room there, said we must have "accidentally" booked a room with only one queen size bed since we have two people and a dog (I was like "no . . . that is fine with us"), and she eventually "upgraded" us to a bigger room because they obviously didn't reserve the room that we had booked in advance. But the bigger room wasn't pet friendly, so she kind of acted like it was an inconvenience that we had a dog but said it was "fine for one night." Trust me, I would have taken our business elsewhere had there been any other option in that town . . . or any other town closer than 6 hours away. Later, we realized our door didn't close properly--the lock was like hanging by the hinges and could have easily been broken into. But given that there were no other rooms in town, we were stuck. Around 10pm we were terrified when some truckers stood RIGHT outside our door drinking and yelling (this is the type of place where you can drive right up to the door of the room, there's no lobby or hallway). It just was not ideal.

Food options were also bleak. We walked across the street to a place called Gourmet Girl, which had glowing reviews online. I went in and chatted about the takeout options they had. I mentioned we were just passing through town for one night and happy to have found a dinner takeout place across the street from our hotel. I went to relay the info to Grace (who was waiting with Willie outside) and she gave the thumbs up and I went back to order. They were then like "oh we can't make the food until tomorrow." I'm sorry . . . am I living in the twilight zone? What was the conversation we just had?! I walked out and we ended up ordering some takeout from a Canadian chain called Boston Pizza . . . not my first choice but there were literally no other options. I felt like Fort Nelson was just like that in general . . . not a lot of options. I know it's the far north and there aren't a lot of resources but we have now been to multiple towns that are even more remote and had GREAT experiences. Again, sorry to be negative. Just our experience!

We later joked that the Sunrise Inn and Suites was so named because you want to leave at sunrise . . . which we did! We started off along the Alaska Highway and were immediately in a better mood. The mountains and wildlife were breathtaking. 

We stopped at a lake called Muncho Lake and fell in love! They had a super cute campground that we hope to camp at one day. I would spend a week just relaxing at Muncho Lake. It was beautiful.

After stretching our legs at Muncho Lake, we drove on to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory (with our tire pressure light blinking). After Fort Nelson, I had kind of a sinking feeling that every town along the rest of the Alaska Highway would be bleak. Happily, I was wrong :)

We LOVED Watson Lake! Such good vibes. When we got into town, the very first thing we did was pull into a car repair shop we saw. I walked up and found some very "Yukon" people (bearded . . . looking like they could weather 50 years of Yukon winters . . . you get the picture) and asked if they could help us check our tires. They sort of responded (I wasn't sure what they said) and was honestly pretty dismayed at the situation, but I should have withheld judgment because the older man who worked on our tires turned out to be the SWEETEST guy. They had a bunch of shop dogs that Willie loved. They tried to not even charge us anything for pumping up our tires! (Which I wouldn't allow of course). We had a good feeling about this town right away after that experience.

Tires refilled, we decided to go to the Signpost Forest which is a Yukon landmark. Rather than explain it myself, here's a photo of the sign at the entrance:

It's pretty famous (in the realm of Yukon travel), so I'd read it about it in advance and decided to surprise Grace by having signs made of our hometowns (Waterloo, Belgium, for her, and Raleigh, NC, for me). I tucked them away in a bag and showed them to her right as we were driving to the Signpost Forest! It was so sweet nailing them up beside each other.

I have to mention here the people working at the little giftshop next to the Signpost Forest. They were AWESOME! They let us use nails and a hammer to put up our signs, and they were just so friendly and knowledgeable about the area. The one guy running the shop (I wish I had gotten his name) has amazing photography skills, especially of the Northern Lights in the area, and he gave Willie treats. You must must stop here if you go to Watson Lake. It made our day. This is a link to the shop's website--it's the cutest little place!

After that we went to our hotel and didn't leave for the rest of the day. Haha!! We stayed at Andrea's Hotel, which was a little dated and kitschy but I would overall recommend given the remoteness of the area and lack of other pet-friendly options. And we got surprisingly tasty Chinese takeout from a restaurant right next door called the Golden Dragon! We were very charmed by the hospitality we found in Watson Lake. It's a gem of the Far North.

The next morning we set off from Watson Lake for Whitehorse, which is the capital of the Yukon. This was one of our shorter drives at only 4 hours and 30 minutes. We took in the views from the car and the time flew by.

I am not exaggerating when I say that it was love at first sight for me and Whitehorse (well, I hope it's mutual, at least). It's the coolest city. And yes, it's a city, not a town, though by LA standards it is tiny. If you've been to Asheville, North Carolina, it kind of reminded me of that. It's funky, charming, diverse, and unique. To me it also had a bit of European flair to it. It was so clean and beautiful and pure. It holds the Guinness World Record for the city with the least air pollution in the world. It's official nickname is "The Wilderness City." The Yukon River runs right through it, and the atmosphere was moody and dramatic when we arrived.

So dramatic, in fact, that we got caught in a hailstorm! Pebbles of ice came raining down on me as I hurried back to the car from picking up takeout lunch. For two people who live in LA, this was actually kind of a cool novelty . . . except for the fact that we had booked a campsite in Whitehorse as our accommodations for the night. Grace quickly made the executive decision to book a hotel room instead and I'm so glad she did. We ended up staying at the Coast High Country Inn, and it was LOVELY. We walked up to the front desk asking if they had any rooms, and they went above and beyond, booking us a spacious room with the biggest Jacuzzi I have ever seen, and feeding Willie treats the whole time. The lobby was filled with people, and Willie was seriously holding court with his little fan club around the fireplace! It was adorable. 

The Coast High Country Inn, our shelter in a storm--literally

Willie was VERY happy with our decision to stay in a comfy hotel and not sleep in a tent in a hail storm

After getting the room figured out, we explored Whitehorse a little bit! And I fell harder in love. We decided we definitely want to come back and use Whitehorse as a jumping off point for a bigger Yukon vacation. 

Adorable local bookstore

With a whole section on the Yukon + the Far North in general (heart eye emoji here)

We got takeout from the place in the photo above, Klondike Rib & Salmon. It's been featured on the Food Network a few times and is generally regarded as one of the best restaurants in the Far North! (The only reason we got takeout instead of actually eating there was because we didn't want to leave Willie). Super yummy and interesting food--we felt like Yukon locals eating food from there.

I was genuinely sad to leave Whitehorse and look forward to returning. But we weren't too bummed to leave, because the next day would take us into ALASKA! More to come soon :)

Planning the Drive from California to Alaska--and Back!

Hi there! If you've just found this page through Google and are interested in driving from California to Alaska, you are in the right place. Since blogging our trip, this post in particular has gotten a lot of search engine traffic, so I wanted to write a short new introduction for anyone just starting out on planning their drive. The blog post below, on planning the route, is from August 2017. We drove to Alaska and back in September 2017. If you want to see all of my posts on that drive--recaps, takeaways and musings, recommendations, packing lists, etc.--click here. Overall, if you are thinking about doing this drive, just GO. I was unemployed for a month and threw caution to the wind and had the best month of my entire life (so far). I can't recommend the experience enough. And if you have logistical questions, feel free to ask on my Contact page.

Without further ado, here's the original post on planning the route:

I cannot tell you how excited I am to start a new category on my blog today--our California to Alaska road trip! A big part of the reason I started this blog when I did was to share about this upcoming trip. We dreamed it up a year ago. I'm not exactly sure how it even popped into our heads, but I've wanted to see Alaska my whole life and have never been. When we started talking about going, it quickly became clear that we could not go without Casper. He always loved road trips, and this one (all 7,200 miles of it) would be his crowning glory of all road trips.

One of the clearest memories I have from the "wake" we had for Casper is sobbing to our LA friends and family, barely able to choke out the words, "I just wish he could come with us to Alaska." Even though it stings to remember that day because I was SO incredibly devastated, it's a warm memory, too, because I can still feel the love and physical presence surrounding me during that sob-fest--friends' hands holding mine and arms around me. I remember standing in the kitchen that day with one friend, wondering aloud how this could ever be okay. Will we still go on the trip? How can we do it without our dog? Well, as the weeks have passed, healing has happened. This trip is going to be more meaningful than we ever imagined when we started planning it in 2016. In the car with us will be Willie, Casper's chosen brother, and also a cherished wooden box of ashes, all that we have left of Casper. Yes, we are going to scatter (some, not all of) Casper's ashes on the trip.

But backing up a bit, I want to share our planning process for this trip. I would conservatively estimate that I have spent 100 hours just researching for this trip (not counting the hours we have spent shopping for supplies, talking about it, packing, getting the car ready, etc.). A LOT of that research (probably the majority) has been reading people's blogs who have driven from the continental US through Canada to Alaska. I've learned so much and been so inspired reading about others' travel. Here are a few favorite blogs that detail their trips North:

Gone with the Wynns--amazing blog written by a couple who drove their RV through Canada to Alaska. They have dozens of posts about the journey and provide a lot of detail about things like road conditions, crossing the border, etc.

My Itchy Travel Feet--good practical advice and city-by-city recaps of driving the Alaska Highway

Mali Mish--another good guide to the distance they covered each day

North to Alaska--this is a company, but they have a page called "Community Routes" with dozens of little travel journals from people who have done the trip!

This isn't intended as a criticism of any other blogs, but one thing I felt myself craving when reading about people's road trips to Alaska was detail. I wanted to know everything about their planning process, each stop they made, and just generally how they did it. So get ready for a TON of detail in this post. If you are planning a similar trip (even if you're reading this long after I post it), I would love to answer any questions you have--Contact me!

Though I am a big fan of spontaneous trips (our Yosemite trip was planned in less than a week and our recent Santa Cruz mountains getaway was pretty last-minute, too), the #1 thing I can recommend in planning a trip where you're traversing a continent is to plan it well in advance. From what I've read, in summer months it's totally possible to drive to Alaska with no advance reservations for lodging and without a clear plan of a destination each day. That said, for us this is a trip of a lifetime. In planning it I tried to build in flexibility and room for spontaneity, but I also wanted the best of the best for us. I wanted to stay at the coveted campsites that you have to book the day they become available online (true story, I set my alarm for 5am to book some campsites the minute they opened--and later that day the whole campground was full). I wanted to find a dreamy suite overlooking Vancouver, and I wanted to rent adorable cabins in the wilderness that fill up months ahead of time. Yes, you can fly by the seat of your pants, and that would be fun in a different way. But for all my fellow type-A people reading, here's how we planned our Alaska trip!

Trip Stats:

Origin: Los Angeles, California

Farthest Point: Anchorage, Alaska

Ending destination: Los Angeles, California (7,200 miles total; 123 hours in the car--almost the distance of driving between my hometown of Raleigh, NC, and Los Angeles three times).

Dates on the road: September 2 to September 25, 2017

States and Provinces Covered: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.

International Border Crossings: 4

Time Zones: 3

Here's a map of our route (as you'll see, we're taking one way up and another way back down, so we can see more of the continent). Taking the seemingly-less-direct route through Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Alberta on the way up only adds a few hours to the entire trip, and it lets us see Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada.

Planning Timeline:

10-12 months out: decide dates and destinations within the trip. Grace and I did this over two days at favorite coffee shops, looking at a map and doing a lot of googling where to stay and information about the various towns along the way. I ended up tweaking a few things as I later went and actually booked accommodations for each night (i.e., sometimes I would end up picking a town 30 minutes further down the road if it had better hotel or campground options, etc.), but it was really helpful to have a general structure that Grace and I had agreed on together for each day of the trip.

6-10 months out: reserve accommodations for the trip during this time. The reason I did this over such a long span of time was because (a) I didn't want to drop around $2000 on accommodations all at once (sidenote: this trip hasn't been cheap as far as road trips go. I am going to talk about the financial side of things and budgeting in a separate post coming soon); and (b) some reservation windows didn't open until a certain number of months out, especially for campgrounds. So instead, over a period of 5 or 6 months I made reservations little by little. The first things I booked were Airbnb's and campsites (especially at the more desirable places like Banff and Jasper) because those tend to fill up quickly. Hotels seem to have more availability. It might seem daunting to book accommodations for several weeks' worth of travel, often only staying one night in each location, but it's the BEST feeling when you book everything. We have over 20 different reservations for our road trip, and the day I booked the last one I opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. That was back in May--and having it all done months before our trip even begins has allowed us to go into it relaxed, not frantic.

Also 6-10 months out: locate your passports if you're driving through another country, make sure they won't expire within 6 months of your travel, and look into car insurance for the country you'll be going to if necessary. 

4-5 months out: decide what you're going to do with your job, home, car (we're taking Grace's car and I normally park on the street and don't want to leave it out that long, so I'm putting mine in storage), etc. If you're going on a trip as long as ours, it's probably a good idea to figure out how that will work with your job well in advance.

2-3 months out: start thinking about packing lists, supplies, and dog-related needs if you're bringing a dog. Canada has certain requirements for bringing a pet (as well as pet food) over the border, so we made a special appointment with our vet to talk about it. 

1 month out/last few weeks before leaving: purchase supplies you will need, get your car serviced to make sure it's in tip-top shape for the drive, call your credit card company to make sure they know you'll be traveling and won't freeze your card, get some cash (including Canadian dollars) in advance, set up an international cell phone plan (I have Verizon and they have a good deal for using your phone in Canada), pack your bags, and say goodbye to friends and family for a few weeks!

How I Have Prepared and Stayed Organized:

A couple of weeks ago (at the one-month mark 'til leaving for our trip), I surprised Grace with this:

Now affectionately called "The Book." It is the product of months and months of research, planning, saving, booking, and more. Basically, I have a tab for each day of the trip and under that tab I have a printout of our accommodations reservation (whether campsite, hotel, or vacation rental), a list of addresses and phone numbers we need, a breakdown of roadside attractions and recommendations, and details like what time the sun rises and sets (we are changing time zones frequently and sometimes the sunset time will shift by as a much as an hour from day to day on the trip). I also have maps for each area where we'll be spending time. Making something with this level of detail might not be your travel style, and that's fine! But we want to be able to unplug and not look at our phones as much as possible, so that's why I made The Book instead of planning on using apps or notes on my phone constantly.

Before The Book was complete, I used (and still use) a google spreadsheet to keep me organized. This was especially helpful while I was going through the slow process of booking all of our accommodations. Here's a screenshot of my setup (with the exact places we're staying removed--sorry Internet, but I don't want to put the exact day and campsite number of where we'll be camping--after our trip is over I'll be more than happy to share every single detail of where we slept).

As you're probably gathering from this post, my dream and heart for this trip is that it will be carefree, without the need to find a place to stay on the fly or do research while we travel. With that in mind I've tried to be extremely detail-oriented and do everything I can possibly do ahead of time. An example of that is pre-ordering our Canada Parks Discovery Pass, which you have to have to go into the Canadian National Parks (seen in the first photo of this post). This year they are free to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary of confederation (such a happy coincidence once I found that out--we had no idea when we planned this trip), but you still have to get a pass and hang it in your car. They take about a month to ship. I'm glad I found that out back in February or March, because now we can breeze right into the parks without having to wait at a ranger station or get in line to get a pass. I'm hoping little things like that will make our travel smoother, especially on days when we're cramming a lot in.

Good Rules of Thumb:

As much as Grace and I love camping, we also really love being comfortable and well rested. For that reason, we are doing no more than two back-to-back nights of sleeping in a tent on this trip. Three is doable as well, but given how many hours we're spending on the road, we really need to get a good nights' sleep each night. Also, we want to be able to take showers. So for example, once we get into Canada, we are spending our first night there at a campground in Banff National Park.  We are spending the next night at a campground in Jasper National Park. We bookended those two nights in a tent with more traditional accommodations on either side--the night before we get to Banff we are staying in a home rental in Helena, Montana, and the night after we leave Jasper we rented a hotel room in Dawson Creek, British Columbia (yes, like the show! I don't think it's in any way related, though).

If you are planning this trip with a friend or significant other, know that it takes a LOT of work and I really recommend dividing the labor based on what comes naturally to each of you. So for us, I'm the type-A planner and Grace is most definitely not. But she more than makes up for that in other wonderful gifts. She is going to be the driver on this road trip, so I wanted to plan all of the destinations and distances with her to make sure she was okay with it. But for things like hotel and campground reservations, I'm more of the one who loves poring over yelp reviews and selecting the perfect place. So Grace was happy to leave the reservations to me, while she helped structure the outline of the trip. Grace also provided much-needed reality checks for me during the process, something that she's great at. For instance, I got a wild idea that we should try to go to Wyoming and see Yellowstone as part of this trip. Grace (not at all negatively) veto'ed that idea. I'm so glad she did. Planning it with her sense of practicality in the mix helped make this trip something we can actually do, rather than biting off more than we can chew.

Itinerary:

In case you're planning a similar trip, this is the itinerary we are planning on following:

Day 1: LA to St. George, Utah

Day 2: St. George to Antelope Island, Utah (island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake)

Day 3: Antelope Island to Helena, Montana

Day 4: Helena to Banff, Alberta (crossing into Canada!)

Day 5: Banff to Jasper (driving the Icefields Parkway, supposed to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world!)

Day 6: Jasper to Dawson Creek, British Columbia

Day 7: Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson, BC

Day 7: Fort Nelson to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory

Day 8: Watson Lake to Whitehorse, YT

Day 9: Whitehorse to Tok, ALASKA(!!)

Day 10: Tok to Anchorage, Alaska

Days 11-14: Staying at our "base camp" in Anchorage with various excursions and day trips possible (trying to keep it low key to rest)

Day 15: Anchorage back to Tok

Day 16: Tok to Haines Junction, YT

Day 17: Haines Junction to Nugget City, YT (cutest name award)

Day 18: Nugget City to Bell II, BC

Day 19: Bell II to Telkwa, BC

Day 20: Telkwa to Williams Lake, BC

Day 21: Williams Lake to Vancouver, BC

Day 22: Vancouver to Portland, OR (back in the US!)

Day 23: Portland to Weed, California (yep that's the name of the town)

Day 24: Weed to Berkeley, CA 

Day 25: Berkeley to HOME!

If you are going to make the drive and want pet-friendly recommendations for any of these places, I will gladly let you know where we stayed and how we liked it once we get back from the trip (feel free to Contact me). I also plan on blogging updates during the trip when possible (wifi might be scarce). Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our planning process! We leave in 16 days!