The long road trip to Alaska

By Angie Stegall • May 28, 2018 • Adventure/Travel

We made it! All 4,609 miles of the long road trip to Alaska.

All 10 tanks of diesel. All the money that diesel cost (ouch). We stayed in rest stops, truck stops, and one WalMart parking lot in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory.

My hubby and I just finished an epic 4,609 mile road trip from Gastonia, NC to Moose Pass, AK, where we’ll be spending the summer as campground hosts at the Trail River campground. It’s something we’ve always wanted to try and when we found this job (that paid a bit of money and allowed us some flexibility in the middle of the day), we said, “YES.”

Crossing into Canada

Our entire rig got searched as we crossed the border into Canada in Portal, North Dakota. We got split up (Yukon had to stay inside and Bean headed out with the border guard). When the border guard who was searching our rig stepped on the corner of the dog’s water bowl and spilled water all over the place. Bean heard her whisper, “Oh shit” when she did it. And she felt really badly. Bean tried not to laugh. Of course, they didn’t find anything worth getting excited about and sent us on our way. Crossing backing into the USA? They checked our passports, said hi to the dog, and sent us motoring up the highway.

We saved money by eating a lot of homemade chicken salad and veggies with hummus. We exercised by taking walks around the rest areas and parking lots.

We listened to two audio books (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller and The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish — shocking and hilarious) before we listened to a lot of silence when our radio mysteriously stopped working and we completely lost cell signal in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.

But our time on the road was also beautiful.

On this epic road trip to Alaska we met several nice folks from Talkeetna and Kodiak, AK, and different places in Canada (including a guy and his dad from Saskatechewan on a road trip together. They wanted to visit White Horse, so they put some hot dogs and beer in a cooler and drove several thousand miles themselves to the Yukon Territory to check it out).

The best part of the trip was around Muncho Lake in British Columbia. That entire is so stunning…there really aren’t enough words. Between how beautiful the water was, to how grand the mountains were, to how much wildlife we saw…holy cow. We’d go back there for a longer trip in a hot second.

Our unplanned stop at the unbelievably awesome Liard Hot Springs was magical and we will visit again on our way home for sure!

Plus, between British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and arriving in Alaska, we saw:

8 moose
7 black bear
8 porcupine (they are BIG)
20 bison
15 caribou
1 coyote
4 eagles
4 Arctic Hares

After this epic road trip to Alaska, we’re finally settled in our internet-free campground in Moose Pass. We’ve installed in a cell phone signal booster that seems to get us a decent signal plus the ability to text. Hooray! Bean will probably have to go into Seward to do any internet-based work, but she can coach from the rig, which is important!

Campground hosting at Trail River Campground, Moose Pass, AK

The campground we’re hosting is gorgeous. Full of trees, right next to the aquatic blue Trail River, and bordered by green and blue Kenai Lake.

So far, we haven’t seen any animals except a ground squirrel or two. We have spotted a couple moose and two black bear on our drives back and forth from Seward, which has been fun.

We’ll share more about our campground duties (and how the potty wagon is trying to kill Bean). Until next time, go check out our many photos on Facebook (we can’t upload many photos on this blazingly-slow internet connection we’re currently dealing with).