We finally made it to Anchorage! Our first stop in the city was at the airport to pick up a rental car. After a bit of a delay caused by a glitch in the rental car company’s computer system, Valerie and I rejoined Valerie’s parents at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Anchorage. Valerie’s mom was very happy to return some of the unused items that we had purchased from other Wal-Marts earlier in our trip.

After a quick lunch from the nearby Pizza Hut, we headed to our campsite: Portage Valley RV Park in Portage, AK. Just a short drive from the tunnel to Whittier, this conveniently located campground offers water and electrical hookups, showers, and portable toilets. The showers were great; the portable toilets were less great.

The Tok Cutoff Road from Tok to the Richardson Highway was probably the bumpiest highway we’ve driven on in Alaska. It seemed like several sections of the road were in the process of being resurfaced. After turning off, it was mostly smooth sailing to Glennallen, followed by a long stretch of construction on the way to Tolsona.

Our campsite was the Tolsona Wilderness Campground near Glennallen, AK. This is a fairly rustic campsite that only accepts cash. (This is the first campsite we’ve stayed at that did not accept credit card!) The showers were great and only cost a quarter for 5 minutes. We took a short hike around the campsite where we spotted some moose tracks. Afterward, we ate dinner at a restaurant in the nearby Tolsona Lake Resort Motel & Cafe. The portions were large and the food was surprisingly tasty.

We made it to Alaska! The last 20+ kilometer stretch of the Alaskan Highway in Yukon was under heavy construction. Most of the road surface was gravel and traffic was restricted to one-way travel under the direction of pilot cars. We had heard a lot about frost heaves while researching this trip and we were happy to find that the road was free of any particularly dangerous heaves. Once we entered Alaska, the road quality improved dramatically.

Earlier, in the morning, we stopped by the Village Bakery in Haines Junction for some delicious cinnamon buns, scones, and bread.

Our campsite is Tok RV Village in Tok, AK. It seems like a pretty good campground, with well maintained bathrooms, laundry facilities, and plenty of mostly level campsites.

Today, we drove through Whitehorse, the largest city and capital of Yukon! We parked by the visitor center, where the Yukon tourism associate pointed out some of the key destinations in town. We ate a hardy lunch at Klondike Ribs & Salmon in downtown Whitehorse. After lunch, we stopped by the MacBride Museum of Yukon History, but declined to walk through it due to a lack of time and a steep $10/person admission fee.

After a quick stop at the Wal-Mart in Whitehorse, we drove to Haines Junction, YT. Our campsite is Kluane RV Kampground. There is only one single-occupant bathroom for each gender, but they are clean and well maintained. There’s also a hiking trail that abuts the RV park that we walked along for about half an hour.

I’ve been told that there’s a good bakery in Haines Junction and I’m looking forward to sampling their goods tomorrow.

We’ve seen more wildlife along the side of the Alaskan Highway than at any of the national parks. Today, we saw a few more bison, a wolf, and 8 bears (no bear families today). Valerie’s mom is very excited whenever we encounter wildlife. We sometimes slow down the RV to take pictures when it is safe to do so.

We stopped by the signpost forest in Watson Lake and the nearby visitor center. We watched a short movie about the construction of the Alaskan Highway and then received a whole lot of helpful information from a Yukon tourism associate.

Our campsite was the Yukon Motel in Teslin, YT. It has free WiFi in the restaurant, which serves pies and cinnamon rolls. It is located just after the bridge to Teslin, so bridge noise might keep up light sleepers (like Valerie).

After filling up on gas and propane in Fort Nelson, we started our drive to Summit Lake in the Stone Mountain Provincial Park. We briefly tried to walk around the lake, but cut our hike short due to mosquitos. As we drove down the mountain, we saw six bears (including what we assume was a momma bear and two cubs), a herd of bison, and lots of stone sheep. We stopped at the Salt Lick Viewing Area near Muncho Lake for a quick hike to view salt lick (but sadly no animals licking the salt) followed by lunch in the RV. Finally, we headed to Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park for a dip in the hot springs. As expected, the hot springs were hot and the facilities were quite nice (except for the lack of a shower).

Our campsite was the Liard Hotsprings Lodge (across the street from Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park). I would not recommend this campsite. In retrospect, we should have dry camped at the provincial park instead of staying here.

We left camp around 11:00 this morning to head to Dawson Creek, the official start of the Alaskan Highway (aka ALCAN or Alaska-Canada Highway). After a quick stop at the visitor centre and a quick lunch at Pizza Hut Express, we departed for an 7+ hour drive to Fort Nelson in British Columbia. During our long drive, we saw a bear foraging along the side of the road as well as what was either a large dog or a wolf. While I was expecting the Alaskan Highway to be difficult to drive, this section of road is much less scary than the logging road on the way to Grande Prairie from Jasper NP.

Our campsite was the Triple G Hideaway in Fort Nelson. They have good WiFi, laundry machines, a restaurant, a friendly staff, and campsites that are level. However, to use the showers costs 1 loonie.

In the morning, we drove to Jasper town and stopped by Tim Hortons for some donuts and free WiFi. After that was a long day of driving down the mountain. We stopped by the Wal-Mart in Grande Prairie, where we stocked up on supplies and picked up some dinner.

Our campsite was Camp Tamarack in Grande Prairie, AB. There are a lot of mosquitos here. The WiFi is pretty good though.

In the morning, we stopped by Banff town for some breakfast at McDonalds and a nearby shop for beaver tail shaped fried pastry called a “beaver tail”. Yay for free Wifi at McDonalds!

Then we were off for a long day of driving. Our first stop was Lake Louise, which was mostly frozen. (It looks nothing like the postcard!) After being cold for a while, we walked though the public areas of the nearby Fairmont hotel and returned to the RV. Our next stop was the Columbia Icefield Centre, from which one can see at least 5 glaciers with the naked eye. The company running the centre also offered tours that drive out onto the glacier in a bus (which looked pretty cool) and something called a glacier skywalk (which seemed less fun). We declined to participate in either activity as we still had a lot of driving to go.

Around 20:00, we arrived at our campsite, Whistler’s Campground in Jasper National Park. It’s a long walk to Jasper town. However, there is a big RV parking lot just outside of town on the other side of the train tracks on Highway 93A.

In the morning, we decided to take a scenic drive to Red Rock Canyon by way of a tiny mountain road. After that harrowing adventure, we headed off to Banff National Park.

We noticed that the Parks Canada rangers always greet us by saying “Hello! Bonjour!”. In addition, the signs in the parks are bilingual, while the regular road signs in Alberta are only in English. The Canadian park rangers are as helpful and friendly as the American park rangers.

Our campsite was the Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court. It is a pretty long walk from the Trailer Court to Banff town. There is a shuttle from the for $2/person that runs fairly frequently, but we decided it would be more time-efficient to just drive into town and park our RV outside the downtown area.

I’m beginning to worry that this trip is too long. I think 5 days is a good length for an RV trip. Any more than that and I fear that I may slowly go mad. Only ~2500 miles to go…