With this weekend, the great American travel season begins. Thanks to the Trump administration's energy policies, gasoline prices are already dropping, which will encourage more Americans to take to the road. There's a lot to be seen out there, from the Florida Keys to Denali, from the rocky coast of Maine to the beaches of southern California.
For those of us who live in areas that are popular tourist destinations, we get a near-daily reminder of the vacation season. Hereabouts, it's the increased traffic on the Parks Highway; why, only the other day I had to stop at the end of our side road and let four cars go by before pulling out onto the highway. Four! Can you imagine? It's like living in a big city! And, of course, there is the increased patronage at our favorite Susitna Valley dining spot, but that's all to the good; local businesses count on the tourist trade.
Of all the driving destinations one can make in North America, though, there is one that looms large, literally and figuratively: The Alaska Highway.
The Alaska Highway begins at Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, BC. The first 613 miles/987 km of the Alaska Highway are in British Columbia, where it is designated BC Highway 97 North. The highway travels in a northwesterly direction to the Yukon border near Watson Lake, YT (Historical Mile 635). From there it continues as Yukon Highway 1, crossing 577 miles/929 km of Yukon to Port Alcan on the Alaska border. The Alaska Highway crosses into Alaska at Historical Mile 1221.8, where it becomes Alaska Route 2. From this international border, it is 200 miles/322 km to Delta Junction, AK (Historical Mile 1422), the official end of the Alaska Highway, and 298 miles to Fairbanks, the unofficial end of the highway, at Historical Mile 1520.
The Alaska Highway was proposed as a national security measure in the 1920s, when one Thomas MacDonald, who was the director of the United States Bureau of Public Roads, proposed a highway to connect the Alaska Territory to the rest of the continental United States. But despite a couple of publicity stunts designed to prompt the effort, there were complications, not the least of which was that much of the route would pass through Canada.
Pearl Harbor changed all that. Japanese ships were threatening the Aleutian Islands and even the West Coast, so the Army approved the Alaska Highway project, with the backing of President Roosevelt and Congress. 10,000 men were assembled, about a third of them segregated blacks-only regiments, and they quite literally started out driving bulldozers through the wilderness. By October 1942, they had completed a rough but passable road, starting in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and ending up in Delta Junction, Alaska.
For many years, the road remained rough, with nasty grades and switchbacks in many places in the Canadian Rockies. Now, though, the route has been smoothed out and leveled out some, and is paved almost the entire way. It's now an amazing drive, and I can attest to this in person, as in the process of moving to the Great Land, my wife and I drove our truck and trailer from the Denver, Colorado area to our Susitna Valley home. We drove it in late March; I'd recommend doing it in summer, but we were moving, and time wasn't a luxury.
So here's what that journey looked like for us.
Day 1: Denver, Colorado to Shelby, Montana. Shelby is about twenty miles south of the Coutts, Alberta entry station into Canada. So in the morning, we rose early to get an early start to deal with the bureaucracy at the border. And this was, mind you, during the COVID scare; it took almost four hours to clear Canadian customs. In the process, we were subjected to a lecture by a Mountie: "Don't go inside any stores; pay at the pump when you buy gas. Don't get caught (wink) coming out of a store with stuff you bought. If you buy food, get drive-through." Of course, most of the route, the gas stations had old mechanical gasoline pumps; we quickly learned that most of the cautions were just bureaucratic horse squeeze.
Day 2: Shelby, Montana to Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Dawson Creek is where the Alaska Highway proper begins. I’ve done some reading about the town, and it seems like it would be a fun place to spend a few days. Our night in Dawson Creek, in late March, was marked by the temperature dropping into the teens below zero, which made us worry a little about all the computer gear we had in the truck, but it all came through OK. On this stretch of road, you spend a lot of time in Alberta, where one feels like a tiny, tiny bug crossing a truly stupendous plate. We got caught in one snowstorm approaching the border to British Columbia; other than one more snowstorm in the Yukon, that was the only bad weather we encountered.
Day 3: Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. This is where gas stations and so forth get thin on the ground, so it’s prudent to keep the tank topped up. I would recommend not letting your gas level drop below half a tank if you can help it, and if your vehicle has short legs, carry a couple of gas cans. There are long stretches between Dawson Creek and the Yukon where the highway is quite literally a ribbon of asphalt going through a howling wilderness. It's amazing, breathtaking, beautiful, even in late winter. We had to stop at one point to let a herd of wood bison cross the highway; they were in no rush to cross and aren't intimidated by mankind or our vehicles. From Fort St. John to Fort Nelson, it's about 240 miles, and there's just not a lot out there.
Day 4: Watson Lake, Yukon Territory to Tok, Alaska. Tok is where we leave the Alaska Highway, which continues (officially) to Delta Junction, while the highway continues up to Fairbanks. Now we’re back into the States, and officially into the Great Land! It is along this stretch that you cross the Continental Divide - yes, it's that far west. We got caught in a snowstorm on one pass through the mountains, but the roads were all right, if a bit slushy. We stopped at the top of the pass to take some photos, and a trucker headed the other direction assured me the road was fine once we dropped out of the mountains on the stretch into Whitehorse. We crossed through American customs, and the Customs officer asked one question: "Do you have any guns or ammo?" I had a few, the ones that were legal to take through Canada, locked in the trailer. I handed him the list we had prepared for Canadian customs. He gave it a brief look, shrugged, and said, "Welcome home."
Day 5: Tok, Alaska, to our new home in the Susitna Valley, Alaska. This involves a trip down the Glennallen Highway, which is a gorgeous drive, and then through Palmer and Wasilla to home. We pulled in about mid-day on that last day, tired but happy.
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We'd love to do it again someday, but in the summer, and now with the idiotic COVID rules well behind us. There's a lot to see along the route that we didn't have time for, not only because of the COVID nonsense but because we were also pulling a trailer with a bunch of our household lares and penates inside, so we were motivated to move right along. Next time, we'll go in summer, and we'll take our time.
The United States is a big, big place, and there are many great scenic journeys one can make. There are a lot right here in the Great Land, and we are busily planning expeditions to places like Valdez, Chicken, Circle, and so on. If you're looking for an adventurous drive, though, the Alaska Highway will literally take your breath away - but plan on a week, at least. It's a long drive, and it's a daunting prospect - but I think you'll find it worth all the time behind the wheel.
