Driving on the ALCAN

Beginning of the ALCAN

Starting on day four of our journey we found ourselves finally on the Alaska-Canadian Highway (the ALCAN). This road would take us all the way into the Yukon Territory and then drop us off right past the boarder in Alaska. This was a twisty-turny road that took us through some of the most beautiful mountains and valleys we had ever seen. 

Driving the ALCAN is something most people never get to do in life. I now highly recommend it. If you're one that enjoys camping and being in the amazing out doors, this is for you. Along the way we saw many semi-truck drivers, RV's, motorcyclists, and bicyclists, who were all going from one side of the ALCAN to the other. It was amazing watching some of the bicyclists along their journey working their way up the hills. Kudos to them. It looked awful, yet I can imagine the reward of pushing yourself to the limit and being able to say you finished the ALCAN on a bike makes it well worth it. We just kindly drove past and waved-- admiring their will power from afar. 

Welcome to the Yukon on the ALCAN Highway 

The ALCAN transported us form Dawson Creek, BC, to Tok, Alaska. While the road doesn't really end until Delta Junction, Alaska, we will be getting to the end of it later in our trip (this would be a totally 1387 miles long). We turned off of the ALCAN in Tok, Alaska, just a few hundred miles away from Delta Junction. While winding it's way through Canada, the road crosses through the Rocky mountains, offering some of the best views. At the highest point we reached 4,250 feet in elevation at Summit Lake, BC. 

View on the ALCAN

Although we didn't stop for many the attractions, we did stop at a tiny little turn off by Racing River and got to bask in some of the amazing views from outside the vehicle. Taking the Jeep just a couple hundred yards off the highway we pulled off into a clearing overlooking the river. It was bright blue, cold as ice, and had many little channels running alongside the main one. Seth decided to test out the glacial water by jumping in- and then proceeding to quickly run back out. I simply decided that dipping my feet in would suffice. 

View of the Racing River

View of the Racing River

 We also stopped at the Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake. This is a place where people bring signs from anywhere in the world to hand on the hundreds of posts driven into the ground. The signs seemingly never end once you get inside. We had read about it in The Alaskan Milepost book, but never expected to stop (shout out to Jim Meyer for letting us use this amazing book :) ).  When we pulled in for gasoline and it was right next to us, we decided to give it a peek for a few minutes. Right off the bat we noticed a Holmen, WI sign. This is when we knew we had to discover more. We also found Wausau WI, Yuengleng (for the beer lovers in our family), and North Port (it was from Washington, but in our hearts it was from Michigan). There were many others including home made signs from Australia, Holland, Germany, and many more. We were sad we hadn't known about this before, or we would have made a sign marking our little slice of the Pan-American Highway history. 

Sign Post Forest 

Yuengling in Sign Post Forset

Wausau sign in the Sign Post Forest

North Port sign in the Sign Post Forest

Holmen WI sign in the Sign Post Forest

The little camping places we stayed at were free. They offered no amenities other than a pit toilet, but we didn't need anything other than the Jeep anyway. One was called Duhu Lake. This had probably 15 campsites and a small dock the lake. The other camp we made was on a trail off of a rest stop. There were only a handful of sites along the trails, but it was next to another pretty river. However, the mosquitoes were terrible. So far our Wildlife viewing count stands at 7 bears, 1/2 a moose (it was dead), 2 elk, 12 buffalo, 0 caribou, and 7 big horn sheep. 

So far the trip has been great. We have learned some of the kinks in our daily life and now have smoothed them out. We like to find free campsites- and often drive until our required end time, and then start searching for them. If we can't find a site that is free, we try to keep it under $10. All of us drive and we have a rotation of who will be sleeping in either the Jeep platform, or in the RTT.