Alaska Bound: British Columbia & Yukon

We crossed into British Columbia on the 2nd weekend of May. BC has chain laws from Oct 1 – April 30, so we started our trip north through Canada as early as we could. There are plenty of worthy stops and side trips along the way, but because we wanted to maximize our time in Alaska, we spent most of our weekends behind the wheel.

The first day of our drive took us through the Fraser and Thompson River Canyons.

We stopped at the Dugan Lake Recreation site for the night.

Then continued driving through small First Nation and logging towns of central BC to our first workweek destination of Prince George. Except we only ended up spending one night and work day.

The RV park had beautiful wooded sites, but the iron in the well water was unbearable. After I was not able to find a place to fill up our water bag, we decided to flee to our next workweek destination early.

Leaving Prince George, the signs of civilization got sparse. We drove through the Hart Range of the Rockies where we started seeing the roadside bears that I hoped to see!

We stopped to see a few of the chainsaw carvings in Chetwynd.

And settled into our RV Park in Dawson Creek for what ended up being almost 2 weeks because Michael had a work trip scheduled for the following week.

Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway (also called the Alcan) starts in Dawson Creek. The road was built by the US Army COE during WWII to have a land route for getting military supplies to Alaska. It opened for civilian travel in 1948 and is still the main road into the Yukon Territory and Alaska today. We originally wanted to take this famous historic route to Alaska and the more remote Cassiar Hwy in western BC southbound in the fall but that was not meant to be.

The day before Michael left for his work trip, we woke up to the smell of smoke. Our air purifier, which usually takes up precious floor space, quickly became our most precious possession. We learned that there was a wildfire threatening to destroy the town of Fort Nelson, 4 hours north of us, and had closed the Alaska Hwy.

So when Michael got back, and the road was still not open, we backtracked to Prince George and over to the Cassiar Hwy to detour around the fire.

I think the Cassiar, with 450 miles of no cell service, is one of the most remote places we’ve ever been. It was originally built as a spur off the Alaska Hwy to reach a mine but later extended to connect to the Yellowhead Hwy in central BC. It’s known for its stunning scenery of the Coast Range and wildlife (especially bears) in the spring.

There are several nice lakefront provincial parks. We spent the night at Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park.

The next day we drove the northern half of the Cassiar but our views were limited due to rain. We entered the Yukon and met back up with the Alaska Highway at its mile marker 626.

We saw more bears and also porcupines and caribou on this part of the Alaska Hwy.

This part of the Alaska Hwy felt just as desolate as the Cassiar. We’ve both been surprised about how few people we encountered on these roads. And many of the people we did see, we ended up seeing multiple times.

We spent our third workweek in Canada in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory. We stayed at Pioneer RV Park, where it snowed one day and was almost 70 degrees another day. We enjoyed walking around the city and a walk along the Yukon River at Miles Canyon.

On Memorial Day weekend we completed the last leg of our journey. We passed the Cassiar Mountains and Kluane Lake and spent the night near the Alaska border at Lake Creek Territorial Park.

It is only near a small town on Kluane Lake, aptly called Destruction Bay, that the Alaska Hwy gets rough for the next couple hundred miles to Tok, Alaska. Because the road is built on permafrost, bumps known as frost heaves develop, and if you are driving too fast they can send you airborne.

The next day, we finally made it! From USA border to USA border, with the additional 500-mile roundtrip detour to Dawson Creek, we completed our 2,250-mile drive to Alaska! Our final wildlife count: 13 adult black bears (one possible grizzly), 4 black bear cubs, 1 moose, 2 caribou, and 3 porcupines.

We are ready to stop driving and start exploring!