ALCAN Highway

Hello and welcome back to Nomad Dad Life! The last post was a personal journey instead of about our travels, so if you haven’t read it, please do so here. Today we get back on our journey to Alaska via the ALCAN Highway. Now maybe this wasn’t the smartest thing we have done, but we didn’t book any hotels in advance.

We decided to play everything by ear, see how the weather was, how the kids were doing, how we were doing, and make it as far as we could in a day while conditions were good. We knew our options for gas and lodging would be even more limited in the middle of January than in the summer. However, there wouldn’t be as many people as crazy as we are driving to Alaska at this time of year and there also wouldn’t be anywhere near the number of people looking for rooms as there would be in the summer.

Oh, Canada!

After spending the night in Butte and driving through a snowstorm, we were pleasantly surprised to have clear skies and clear roads when we got the children loaded up in the vehicle. We got a later start than we were planning after spending over ten hours in the vehicle the day before. This worked out, as the customs office to get into Canada didn’t open until 9 AM. We would have had to wait at the border if we left we when wanted to.

There were no issues getting across the border and we were eager to make some progress on our journey. We didn’t want to give up the comfort of modern civilization right away. Calgary was our destination to spend the night. We were able to pick up some things we needed for the trip and a couple safety precautions for some “what ifs”, and we tried to prepare ourselves as best we could for the long road we had ahead.

Our initial plan was to make it to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, which is mile 0 of the ALCAN Highway. That would mean we would have 8.5 hours of driving time ahead of us. We let Arkyn and Ayla play at the pool and stay up past their bedtime to try to get them as ready for the long drive as we could. We knew it would be a challenge no matter what but that did seem to help them with the drive, so much in fact that we drove right past Dawson Creek to the next town with options for lodging, Fort Nelson, British Columbia only five hours past our original destination.

Issues

After Fort Nelson there isn’t really much for lodging and even fewer that are open in the winter. We had a goal to make it to Whitehorse, Yukon, 10.5 hours away. Of course, everyone knows with plans they never go the way the way you think they will. We started out like any other day with a later start then we wanted with the kids. We got on the road and dealt with light snow, but that would be the least of our problems. Fae started having some car issues. . .

Multiple things were going on so I thought it was an electrical issue. Those issues started compounding and her vehicle was overheating. We had slow travels for a while, stopping every 10-15 minutes until we made it 100 miles to the nearest gas station that was open to pick up some more coolant after hers got burned up. After we were able to get her coolant filled, we had smooth sailing for a while. That, however, didn’t last long.

She started losing power in literally the middle of nowhere. Nearest town was two and a half hours either direction. Her heater wasn’t working, we had no cell phone services, just the walkie-talkies that we borrowed from the kids so we could communicate with each other. There was nothing we could do, and nowhere we could stop to get it looked at or fixed. We just had to keep going as far as we could and hope for the best.

Keep on keeping on

Fae didn’t make it much farther before she just couldn’t go any further. She had to pull over and before I could even get out of my truck, an empty car transporter heading the other direction saw her pull over and stopped immediately. The odds of that happening had to be almost 0. Obviously when we were there was no calling a tow truck, no way to call a cab for a ride, and no place to stay. We were able to move some things between the vehicles quickly, got the kids loaded up in my truck, and got Fae’s vehicle on the car transporter.

God was definitely looking out for us that day. We all piled into my truck and continued our drive to Whitehorse. We had about 5 or 6 hours left and we didn’t see another semi our whole drive, let alone an empty car transporter that could get Fae’s Jeep off the road. It was crammed in my truck, but we were all warm and safe so we couldn’t complain. We made it to Whitehorse, pulled up to a hotel, and were ready to get some sleep after a long day. We didn’t know they had a hockey tournament in town while we were there, so there were no rooms available at the hotel. . .

So, we called the next hotel we could find. No rooms available. Options were running out, and it was time to run down the list we found on Google. We ran through about half of them before we found one that had an available room. This was important for us because there was nothing between Whitehorse and Anchorage. We had 12.5 hours of driving left and we had to do it in a day. There were zero options for lodging this time of year. We needed rest and we needed to wait until morning to drive because no gas stations were open after Whitehorse and none along the ALCAN had a pay at the pump option.

Back in the USA

We didn’t have the option of sleeping in because we had to leave at a decent time to make sure the gas stations on our way to Anchorage would be open. Luckily once we got back into the United States there were pay at the pump options, but they were few and far between. We really had about 3 options for gas between Whitehorse and Anchorage. It really is mind blowing how vast and remote the drive to Alaska is. It is as challenging as it is beautiful. I’m sure there were times where we were at least 100 miles from the next closest human. Pretty wild to think about, eh?

Luckily our trip from Whitehorse to Anchorage didn’t have any issues other than the packed sardine feeling of all four of us packed into my truck. There was barely enough room to turn the steering wheel. Border security gave us some weird looks packed in there that tight! We made it to Anchorage in 3 days. Finally we were able to stay in one place for more than one night. We did not have to put the children in the car seat for a whole day. We got the toys out of the back of the truck so they could just play and be kids again.

That will end this post; our next one will get into our many adventures in Alaska. We spent 6 months in Alaska and our to do list was longer when we left than it was when we got there so we will hopefully be able to go back there and get some more things checked off our list sometime in the future! Please follow our journey on social media by clicking a link below.

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