Driving the Alaska Highway

There are more stories and rumors about the Alaska Highway than you can shake a stick at. We have covered only about 400 miles or so, but we have learned quite a bit. First of all, contrary to popular opinion the entire Alaska Highway IS paved. It is not exactly up to Interstate Highway standards, but paved it is.

For the most part there are decent, if not overly wide, shoulders. Most of the highway has a wide swath cut through the woods, so visibility (for both cars and wildlife) tends to be good. The highway is two lanes with virtually no passing lanes, so slower traffic (like RVers) has to be sensitive and pull over in one of the many pullouts when traffic backs up behind them.

There are lots of trucks. And some of the trucks are carrying HUGE loads. We often see trucks carrying full housing modules for use by construction and logging crews. One truck passed us carrying a wide load – of tires! I cannot even imagine the vehicle they were designed for, but the tires were 9 or 10 feet tall!

Many of the stories about the highway’s surface come from the constant construction going on. There are two seasons up here – winter and construction. (Some people think the seasons are winter and mosquitoes.) So there is always construction going on in warm(?) weather. Many of the construction sites have loose gravel, and that’s where the stories of broken windshields come from.

What many people don’t realize is that gravel rarely hits you. You hit it. A vehicle (usually a truck) comes toward you through a gravel zone. When it kicks up a piece of gravel, the gravel usually goes straight up. When it is the air you can run into it. So the answer is usually to slow down in gravel areas. One member of the trek caught a piece of gravel that put a 2” star in the windshield and a couple of circular cracks about 6” in diameter. Luckily it is not in their line of sight so they can just ignore it. In a way they are lucky. Now they don’t have to worry about a cracked windshield anymore! (One RV video I just watched suggested hitting your windshield with a hammer before you leave home just to get it over with.)

Some of the grades are interesting. We have gone up (and down!) several 10% grades. This is steeper than anything we found in the Rockies last year. Going up is slow, but going down is interesting. You have to be careful not to burn out your brakes. I have gone down a couple of these in first gear and still had to use my brakes!

Gas prices ARE everything you may have heard about. Yesterday we paid $1.279 – per liter! That translates to about $5.00 US per gallon. Tomorrow we may have to pay $1.40.

One thing that is an absolute must to travel this road is a publication called “The Milepost.” This is more of a book than a magazine (It is an inch thick!) and is published annually. It is the bible of the Alaska Highway. There is a blow-by-blow description of EVERYTHING to see and do on the highway. It includes all attractions, all lodging and campgrounds, all construction zones, all wildlife spotting areas, all pullouts (including what trash facilities are at each), all gas stations (and whether they have gas, diesel, propane, etc.) and so on down the road. Of course it also includes lots of advertising. When we are traveling, Judy keeps the book open and follows along, giving me a running commentary on what to expect. After all, you don’t want to miss the World’s Largest Glass Beehive or the Cinnamon Bun Center of the Galactic Cluster. (No, I’m not kidding. We didn’t get a picture of the sign. Ask Judy why.)

And a final thought for today about the name of the road. The official name today is the Alaska Highway. When it was completed in 1942 (which is quite an interesting story) it was known as the Alaska-Canada Military Highway or the AlCan. That name is no longer used and has not been since the late 1940s when the road was opened to the public.