The first step of an Alaska road trip is getting there! It took us 6 driving days to travel 1,257 miles from Dawson Creek, BC to Tok, AK on the Alaska Highway (or the Alcan Highway!). We drive slower and for shorter days because we’re towing our 37′ fifth wheel RV. You could definitely do it faster in a car.
One of the things that we learned was that only 5% of visitors arrive to Alaska via the Alaska Highway. After driving it ourselves, we can see why! We had to replace all 4 truck tires, a leaf spring on the RV, 2 cabinet door hinges, and some screws! You also can start your Alaska road trip by flying into Anchorage or taking the Alaska Marine Highway to Haines.
But it truly feels like an accomplishment to have made it on the Alcan. Even if we saw nothing in Alaska, the drive was so gorgeous that it wasn’t a wasted trip. Not to mention the many bears, moose, bison, bald eagles, foxes, and caribou we saw!
I’ll talk more about these places in future posts, but here are the major sights we visited along the way:
- Mile 0 sign Dawson Creek
- Tetsa river lodge’s famous cinnamon rolls
- Toad River bridges
- Folded Mountains viewpoint
- Muncho Lake
- Liard River hot springs
- Welcome to the Yukon Sign
- Watson Lake Signpost Forest
- George Johnston museum
- Teslin Tlingit Heritage Center
- Whitehorse’s Miles Canyon
- Haines Junction’s Village bakery
- Kluane Lake
I found planning our Alaska road trip to be really challenging because there are very few resources on doing this with kids, the itineraries I found tended to be for just a week long trip, and the typical tourist activities are ridiculously expensive for a family of five.
So I wrote a travel guide for an Alaska road trip with kids that includes everything we’ve learned!
RV Alaska with Kids Travel Guide
If you’re looking for Alaska vacation ideas, you’ve come to the right place! This guide features 20+ pages of what we learned throughout a summer RVing Alaska with Kids.
Now, on to the Alaska Highway recap! We started our Alaska road trip in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, which is the official start of the Alaska Highway!
It felt like a real accomplishment just to make it to mile 0, after traveling thousands of miles and overcoming passport hurdles. Dawson Creek is kind of a strange place, with what felt like half irritated locals annoyed with the other half of irritating American tourists.
Dawson is the last place for major supplies for a looooong time, and we took advantage of a few days to stock up and rest. That was a good call because the trip up the Alcan was a real journey in every sense of the word.
Alaska road trip day 1: Dawson Creek ➡️ Fort Nelson
It was an easy drive, minus a few long, steep grades. But it also wasn’t scenic, and we spent our only night in Fort Nelson figuring how to get our shredded front truck tires replaced, so I have no pictures from that day. The Fort Nelson visitor center is a great place to stop if you want information about the next section of the drive, plus it features free wifi and a free RV sani dump big enough for any size RV if you need it. Definitely make sure you fill up on gas here because you won’t see anything resembling affordable gas again until Watson Lake.
Alaska road trip day 2: Fort Nelson ➡️ Liard Hot Springs
This was when our Alaska road trip started getting gorgeous. We drove through fog so dense on Summit Pass (the highest point on the Alcan) that I couldn’t see the lines 😬 Summit Lake was absolutely beautiful when we drove back down, so your experience of it will really vary based on the weather. But then the area around Muncho Lake was stunning, and I would camp in the provincial park there were I to plan the trip again. If you have your own kayak, I highly recommend launching your kayak on Muncho Lake!
Liard River Hot Springs was pretty amazing. The hot springs were deliciously hot and relaxing and in a stunning setting. The boardwalk to the springs is a moose habitat. We got to watch a beautiful moose munching on a dinner of aquatic plants with fog rising over the marsh as we headed back from our soak.
Word to the wise: although the Liard River Hot Springs campground is convenient and allows RVs our size, I would not rate it as big rig friendly. I fit ours in there, but it took me circling twice. The neighbors even came out to say they were impressed 😅 You can, however, camp in the overflow lot across the street, which would be my advice for anything longer than a class C. Also, the gas in the Toad River / Muncho Lake / Liard River area is SO expensive. I don’t even want to talk about how much we paid haha.
Alaska road trip day 3: Liard River Hot Springs ➡️ Watson Lake
Watson Lake’s main attraction is the infamous Sign Post Forest. But this day was the day we crossed from BC to the Yukon, and that felt like a huge deal! Yukon is so so so remote that traversing it feels like an accomplishment. It made me realize how “remote” places in the lower 48 just really aren’t the same type of remote 😂 We were so excited to make it to a new part of Canada and to one that is so legendary.
The Watson Lake Sign Post Forest was started by a homesick guy helping to construct the Alaska Highway. It now contains over 90,000 signs from all over the world! We even found one from where we left — Huntsville, Alabama! It also has rusted out vehicles that actually helped build the Alcan, which were a kid fan favorite. The whole site is surprisingly large and really special feeling.
Visitors are encouraged to leave their own sign, and we did! Dan made a sign that said The O’Phalens out of Lego, which is very on brand for our family. People have made signs out of anything they have on hand. We found this stop to be even more interesting than we’d expected.
My advice about Watson Lake itself, though, is to gas up and keep on driving somewhere else to stay. There’s nothing wrong with Watson Lake, but there are so many more scenic options.
Alaska road trip day 4: Watson Lake ➡️ Whitehorse
We broke up the driving on this day with one of my favorite Alcan stops: Teslin! Teslin is a small town, but an excellent place to learn about the indigenous people of the area, the Tlingit (pronounced Klink-it).
The Tlingit are known for many things, including this beautiful style of artwork featured in a giant mural painted on the George Johnston Museum. This was a small but excellent stop for learning about how the building of the Alcan impacted the indigenous people of the area and what traditional lifeways looked like before the road system.
There was also the Teslin Tlingit heritage center, which had gorgeous totem poles out front, cultural artifacts inside, and an absolutely stunning display of graduation dresses as a temporary exhibit. We learned that local indigenous high schoolers often get two graduation celebrations. One is with the high school in Whitehorse where they have to leave to attend and one is at home with their community to celebrate their return.
We took a “break” for a couple of days in Whitehorse, the capitol of the Yukon. Most of our time there was spent replacing the rear truck tires (are you noticing a theme? 😂) which now looked bad after being told they were fine in Fort Nelson. One of the things that’s hard about the Alaska highway portion of the trip is that if you need anything, it’s hard to find! Even in Whitehorse, the biggest city on the road. Our tire saga included having to buy tires at one shop and drive them to another 🙃
Dan did take the kids out to the Miles Canyon hike, which was pretty but not a must-do for us. Although to be fair, our standards for beautiful views have gotten outrageously high! There is also a hot springs we didn’t get the chance to try out because it’s not kid-friendly, but it looked nice.
Alaska road trip day 5: Whitehorse ➡️ Destruction Bay
This leg of the drive was unbelievably scenic, as we drove alongside the dramatic mountains in Kluane National Park. We also spotted a grizzly right alongside the road! Kluane National Park also makes for great stargazing and aurora spotting in spring and fall because it’s a Dark Sky park.
We stayed in Destruction Bay at Congden Creek campground, which is first come first served with no hookups. Lakeside spots fill up fast, but the wooded pull-through are peaceful, too. No cell service though! I planned to do some hiking in the area, but our late start due to tire drama meant we had to skip it. We played by the gorgeous (but chilly) lake before dinner and then rested up for the last couple of hours of driving before Alaska!!
Alaska road trip day 6: Destruction Bay ➡️ Tok, Alaska
This was the toughest part of our entire Alaska road trip by far. We drove for hours not able to go above 40 mph, sometimes averaging 15 mph for miles. This is probably much easier if you’re not towing anything, but was a long, tough stretch in our RV. Consider splitting this up into two days if you’re towing and not in a rush.
Beaver Creek is a tiny town, but the visitor center has adorable free endangered animal coloring books. Our kids have been working on them for weeks! Highly recommend a stop if you have kids who would appreciate that. Otherwise, there’s not much on this stretch to stop for except the Alaska welcome sign!
That feeling you get when you make it to the Alaska part of your Alaska road trip after 8 days on the Alaska Highway!
Alaska road trip: Timing
If you don’t want to drive in snow, you have approximately from late May until mid September to do an Alaska road trip. That’s no guarantee, but it means you’ll likely not encounter any snow. I *highly* recommend driving the Alcan in mid-September for the incredible foliage. I mean, take a look at this forgettable stretch of road in June that was stunning in September:
Alaska road trip: Alaska portion!
Head here for my 7 day Alaska itinerary or buy the e-book with longer itineraries here. I’ve done all the planning for you!
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