Journey to Alaska

It is a very long drive to Fairbanks, Alaska.... approximately 2,200 miles from the Canadian/USA boarder at Glacier National Park.  This amounts to a lot of fuel for our extremely thirsty Winnie at Canadian prices, a high potential for vehicle damage in the form of stone chips, windscreen damage, suspension damage, moose/elk in the road etc; and almost 50 hours of driving (one way) on very taxing roads! Despite all that, it was still our most anticipated and important leg of the journey.

A few weeks ago, when our funds were dwindling, we started to look into other options of seeing Alaska - like flying in and leaving Winnie somewhere near Seattle.  As it turns out, that option would have been just as expensive when we factored in flights, hotels, having to eat out, possibly needing car hire, and paying for storage for the RV. And then we would obviously miss out on the adventure and experience of actually travelling through Canada on the infamously remote and beautiful, but sometimes poorly maintained Alaskan Highway. The Northern Lights has always been a bucket list must-see for us, so sacking it off altogether was not an option! Plus, according to the experts the sun's energy runs in 11 year cycles and is peaking this year in 2013! We have literally planned our whole year trip around getting to Fairbanks (our northern-most stop) at the right time of year to ensure we saw the Northern lights in their full glory. 

The aurora isn't visible at all during the summer months because it hardly gets dark at all in the height of summer.  The dark evenings begin to set in around mid-August, so that is when we planned to arrive in Fairbanks. At 65 degrees north latitude, Fairbanks is within the so-called “Aurora oval” - the area where Northern Lights occur most often and are the brightest. The Aurora is most active late at night or early in the morning, clear skies and darkness are essential to see the northern lights. We considered that we only had a small window of opportunity to see Alaska because it starts to get incredibly cold around the end of September and then the snow arrives. For some reason Adam doesn't fancy driving the Winnie in snow and ice so I hope we time it right as I don’t fancy being stranded in Alaska for the winter!  

We have had our fingers crossed the whole way hoping for a safe trip without any mishaps, we simply can’t afford the hit of a big repair job on the RV without it impacting our budget to get us through to the end of the trip. We had read a lot on various RV forums about the Alaska Highway, and also the horror stories about the state of the road at times. Due to severe winters the roads are affected by frost heaves, cracking, potholes, wash-outs etc. The construction workers spend most of the summer months resurfacing the roads and repairing the damage. They don’t seem to tackle the resurfacing of roads quite the same here as they do at home in the UK.  Here they literally just scrape off the entire top layer of the road surface on both sides at once and divert you onto a makeshift rocky gravel dusty track for more than 20 miles at a time! Not good for the tyres, suspension, windscreen, undercarriage or my nerves! 

Thankfully we only encountered 2 stretches of road that were this bad between Whitehorse and Tok. The rest was mostly surfaced but with potholes and horrendous frost heaves that make you lose your stomach and the suspension bottoms out which I hate!  The scenery though more than made up for the roads, although Adam sadly missed a lot of it as he dare not take his eyes off the road for even a second.  You never know what will jump out in the road just ahead of you, or where the next tire damaging pot hole will be. 

Just to give you an idea of the remoteness of some sections of this road, there is no phone service so if you do break down there is no way of calling for help.  If we get a puncture there is no way we would get a spare put on ourselves (Winnie weighs 8 tonnes!).  We would probably have to wave someone down and hope they would give us a lift to the next town with phone signal!  There was no 911 emergency service for hundred mile stretches of road between towns, so who knows what you do if someone needed urgent medical assistance.  Probably the same procedure – flag down a lift!  Quite scary when you think about it, but I suppose the locals have been surviving here for thousands of years through harsh winters without these commodities so I guess you just get by if you have to.  While I was worrying about the lack of emergency assistance, I also had to convince Adam that the lack of 911 service did NOT mean that the area was a "lawless no man's land" where you could set up some kind of criminal enterprise and easily get away with it.  Clearly there are two kinds of people in this world!

Without mobile signal coverage in Canada to research our trip whilst on the road,  we had to rely on leeching WiFi in the few small towns we came across every few hundred miles or so. We also invested in a book called The Milepost which has full detailed maps of every mile of the Alaskan Highway as well as the all the routes throughout Western Canada and Alaska. It covers all points of interest, touristy stuff and campgrounds free and paid which came in useful a few times.  It lead us to stay at Liard River Hot Springs campsite for our first experience of a natural hot spring pool - fantastic and absolutely boiling at the "source" end of the pool 40-50 degrees C!  Shame we got absolutely done over by the mosquitoes at dusk!  Ugh - I still have three scars on my bum two weeks later...

The town of Watson Lake has a very interesting visitor centre which is surrounded by a signpost forest. Visitors are encouraged to leave a sign here which they mount on posts. There are more than 72,000 signs which vary from license plates, towns, people's names and date of visit or printed mottos.  We didn't have enough foresight to have a sign made beforehand so we just signed the guest book, which we were somewhat bizarrely forced to do before being allowed to leave!  

We also stopped off at what we thought was the access to a lake but what turned out to be a deserted lodge and gas station. It was a really eerie, almost post-apocalyptic scene; all the buildings were in a state of severe disrepair but still wide open to the public. At the lodge, all the windows were broken, some furniture was still inside with loads of evidence of wildlife wandering in and out from the droppings on the floor. We thought we were exploring alone, but then suddenly I smelled smoke from a fire and jumped a mile when a guy popped his head out of the window and came out to say "hi". He introduced himself as being Polish and had lived there alone in the ruins for 3 years. After a few minutes we determined that he was probably harmless, but quite mad as he talked endlessly about having been Vladamir Putin's right hand man, and about how he had been involved in making tanks and weapons for various people in the middle East.

We have found people to be especially helpful when we seem to be having any mechanical issues with Winnie. Since arriving safely in Fairbanks we have developed a few issues: two chips and a crack in the windscreen; suspension airbags on the front coils have popped and deflated resulting in a rather unpleasant ride; the slide out portion of the living area has leaked heavily twice during the night; we're leaking coolant somewhere; and after so many miles on the clock it was time for an oil change on the engine and the generator.  Adam is at least halfway through DIY fixing this never-ending list of Winnie ailments. 

Thankfully, to balance out the shit the night before last we were rewarded with a fantastic show of the northern lights in their full glory!  We had headed out of the town to get away from the light pollution to Chena Lakes recreation area campsite in Northpole. All the conditions were right – a clear, dark sky. We knew we would have to stay up late to see them and at about midnight I spotted a sort of light grey wisp of haze above us, which started to dance and change shape.  It eventually started to show more potential at about 1am, but took another hour for it to really intensify and get going.  We started to see the beautiful colours which looked more like a subtle greeny shaded rainbow with the naked eye, but appeared very bright green through the camera lens. During the finale the lights went mental for a few minutes, changing and moving every second.  I was literally squealing with delight outside in the cold with only socks on my feet as I was in such a hurry not to miss them!  It was so flippin’ amazingly awesome!  I nearly ended up sleeping across the dashboard of the RV where I could see the full sky.  Then I woke up really early excited about looking over my photographs again!  Big cheesy grins all round…and once again we were reminded of how blessed we are to be doing this trip :D

Whilst in Fairbanks, we also took a trip to the fantastic Chena Hot Springs Resort which really deserves a post of its own - so look out for that in another blog.

We hope to set off to Denali National Park in the next few days when we get Winnie back ship shape. We are hoping to get a glimpse of Mount McKinley, North Americas tallest mountain.  With the Aurora as a backdrop it should be magical!  We will keep you posted.