Leaving Alaska: Dirt Roads and a Ferry
We actually left Alaska four times during our summer 2025 trip. (1) In mid-July, we flew out of Anchorage to Portland, Oregon, for a get-together with three generations of Doug's family. (2) In early August, we flew out of Anchorage to Flagstaff, Arizona, for a Celebration of Life of our nephew. (3) In mid-August, we drove through Yukon and a bit of British Columbia, Canada, on our way from Denali National Park to Skagway. (Our time in Skagway, Alaska, was covered in our last blog post.) (4) In late August, we left Alaska for the final time, driving from Skagway through Yukon and British Columbia back to the lower 48.
Mid-August: Driving through Alaska/Yukon/British Columbia/Alaska from Denali National Park to Skagway
Our drive from Denali to Skagway began eastward, with the gravel and washboard dirt road that is the Denali Highway.
The Denali Highway: Rough road and beautiful views, including the Maclaren Glacier. We drove about 25 mph for 135 miles! (Alaska)
Turning southward on the (thankfully paved!) Richardson Highway, we made a quick stop at the Visitor Center for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve (about 60 miles outside the actual Park; a visit to the wilderness and old copper and gold mining towns will have to wait for another trip). The Park's Visitor Center had excellent exhibits about the area, including glacier snow pack and boreal lowland and upland forest.
Informational exhibits at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve Visitor Center, Richardson Highway, Alaska. There was also a lovely walking trail through the boreal forest, and an indigenous cultural center (closed the day we were there). This 13-million-acre park and wilderness preserve is the largest U.S. National Park. Its wilderness continues past the U.S. border into Yukon territory as Canada's Kluane (pronounced "kloo-AH-nee") National Park and Reserve, with over 5 million acres. The combined area includes the largest non-polar icefield in the world.
We turned northeastward on the Tok (pronounced "toke") Cut-Off Highway to Tok, Alaska, then continued on the increasingly unpaved Taylor Highway to Chicken, Alaska.
Two views of the Mentasta Mountains, part of the Alaska Range, from the Tok Cut-Off Highway; the kitschy but fun Chicken, Alaska (winter population 15; summer population 50; summer visitors, a few thousand); one of the many chicken sculptures in town. Chicken was chosen as the town name by the resident miners in 1902 (when it became the second incorporated town in Alaska, behind Skagway, 1900), because they couldn't agree on the spelling of the local abundant game bird, the ptarmigan!
From Chicken, Alaska, it is 40 miles to the border with Yukon territory, Canada, then another 65 miles to the George Black Ferry landing to cross the Yukon River to Dawson City, Yukon. This mostly unpaved road is known as the Top of the World Highway, open only from May to September. The ferry itself only stays open one more month for local traffic; after that, the government maintains an ice bridge across the frozen Yukon River!
Pictures don't do justice to the stunning beauty of the Top of the World Highway (highest elevation is 4,515 feet, near the Alaska-Yukon border crossing).
Dawson City, Yukon, is located at the confluence of the Klondike River (flowing down from the Ogilvie Mountains to the east) and the Yukon River (which flows northwest through Yukon from British Columbia, then west through Alaska to the Bering Sea of the Pacific Ocean). It was a longtime seasonal fishing camp for the Athabascan Gwich'in people, but the discovery of gold in 1896 by Tagish man Skookum Jim Mason and his nephew Dawson Charlie (with a claim filed in the name of Mason's white brother-in-law George Carmack) led to a boomtown of some 30,000 residents within two years, plus perhaps 20,000 more prospectors and miners in the surrounding area. This was the famous Klondike Gold Rush that lasted only three years; when gold was discovered in 1899 in Nome, Alaska, prospectors began packing up and moving on.
In its short heyday, though, the amount of newfound wealth being spent in Dawson City made it the "Paris of the North". Modest one-story buildings were fronted with fancy two-story facades; wooden boardwalks kept shoes and skirt hems out of the muddy streets; and, per the Klondike Visitors Association, "Dance and gambling halls, bars, brothels, restaurants and supply stores all made fortunes 'mining the miners'."
Parks Canada has since refurbished and reconstructed historical buildings (many damaged over the years by periodic floods and fires) to create a fun and colorful townsite, that, along with the nearby Bear Creek gold mining community, the Bonanza Creek [Gold] Dredge No 4 (the largest wooden bucket-line dredge in North America), and the SS Keno (1922-1951) sternwheeler, make up the Klondike National Historic Sites. There are also interesting exhibits at the Visitor Information Center and the Dawson City Museum.
Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall is a casino opened by the Klondike Visitors Association in 1971; the building is from 1901, built by the Arctic Brotherhood fraternal organization and later occupied as a fraternal and then community hall; the vaudeville revue honors the legend of Diamond Tooth Gertie, remembered as a Klondike Gold Rush dance hall girl with a diamond between her two front teeth (what little is known of her life story can be found here) (Dawson City, Yukon).
Heading south from Dawson City, Yukon, toward Skagway, Alaska, we were paralleling in reverse the water passage that Klondike Gold Rush prospectors had made after surviving the White Pass or Chilkoot Trails out of Skagway or nearby Dyea (pronounced "dye-EE"). Prospectors hand-built and navigated their boats and rafts 800 miles from Lake Lindeman to Bennett Lake to Nares, Tagish, and Marsh Lakes, the upper Yukon (Lewes) River, Lake Laberge, and the Yukon River, often portaging around (or capsizing in) river rapids.
Crossing the Stewart River, a tributary of the Yukon River, halfway between Dawson City and Carmacks (another RVer is traveling the opposite direction); the Five Finger Rapids, no longer so dangerous as during Gold Rush days, since portions of the volcanic rock pillars were blasted away in the early 1900s (Yukon territory, Canada).
There are only four bridges across the 1,980-mile long Yukon River, built between 1943 and 1975. One is at Carmacks, Yukon, a town originally called Carmack's Landing after the man who established a coal mine and trading post here - the same George Carmack in whose name the first Klondike Gold Rush claim was made in Dawson City a few years later!
The "Golden Hour" on the Yukon River and the Carmacks Bridge (August, 9:45pm); a beaver swimming and a beaver-gnawed tree; sunset on the Yukon River (August, 10:25pm) (Carmacks, Yukon).
We loved our short time in Carmacks, and would love to come back in some future springtime to see the Yukon River ice break up dramatically.
About 40 miles south of Carmacks, Yukon, we stopped at the historic Braeburn Lodge for their plate-sized cinnamon bun. Bush planes would land at the "Cinnamon Bun Airstrip" across the street just to pick up the famous buns. Sadly, the owners closed the Lodge in May 2026, after over 50 years in business.
From Carmacks, we continued south for a one-night return visit to Whitehorse, Yukon, where we visited a couple of museums we had missed the first time through: the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre and the MacBride Copperbelt Mining Museum. The Beringia exhibits are a fantastic explanation of how alternating ice ages of dry steppes bounded by glaciers and warm ages of expansive seas shaped the geography, animal life, and human migration in the region. The mining museum is small but interesting, with a lovely interpretive strolling path on the grounds as well.
From Whitehorse, the South Klondike Highway, through Yukon and a bit of British Columbia to Skagway, Alaska, was another beautiful drive.
Late August: Driving through Alaska/Yukon/British Columbia from Skagway to the U.S. border
After our stay in Skagway, it was time to head south: our trip-ending exit from Alaska. This involved first zig-zagging north and east to Watson Lake, Yukon, then south on the Alaska Highway through British Columbia. This allowed us to drive the portion of the Alaska Highway that we had missed (driving the Cassiar Highway instead) due to the June 2025 wildfires.
The Yukon Suspension Bridge and Outdoor Museum; a view down the Tutshi River from the bridge (South Klondike Highway, Yukon territory).
Carcross Center of indigenous arts and crafts; Soaring Eagle and Killer Whale memorial poles to Skookum Jim Mason, crafted by his direct descendant, master carver Keith Wolfe Smarch (Carcross, Yukon).
Six cedar totems created by master carver Keith Wolfe Smarch and his apprentices for Haa Shagóon Hídi (Our Ancestors House) cultural center (Carcross, Yukon).
Along the Alaska Highway in British Columbia, the northern terminus of the Rocky Mountains: Fall colors beginning to appear in late August; peaceful Muncho Lake (where we enjoyed a lovely canoe outing from our lakeside campground); Toad River's glacially-contributed silt provides its turquoise coloring. The Canadian Rockies are barer than their southern continuation in the U.S. for three reasons: Glaciers scoured them during ice ages; the tree line is only 7,500 feet, vs., for example, 11,500 feet in Colorado; and their limestone composition shears off more easily, making it hard for soil and plants to establish themselves.
After 600 miles of driving the Alaska Highway through British Columbia, paralleling the awe-inspiring Canadian Rockies, we skipped the final 20 miles (to Dawson Creek, which we had visited for several days at the beginning of June on our drive north). Instead, we cut southwest to visit two of the three hydroelectric dams/generating stations on the Peace River, which together generate about 40% of British Columbia's electricity. Even prior to the dams, the region had been associated with energy, as the site of a coal mine that provided coal to the builders of the Alaska Highway.
Forty miles south, we passed again through Chetwynd, home of the International Chainsaw Carving Championship. The 2025 pieces that we had watched being carved in June had been lacquered and added to the main street lineup.
The air in Chetwynd was smoky from area wildfires; the 2025 champion piece (water buffaloes); so many dogs!; Buckbeak from the Harry Potter books (Highway 97/John Hart Highway, Chetwynd, British Columbia).
Continuing south, we stayed a few more nights at beautiful Canadian campgrounds, with views of lakes and rivers and woods, and made one more tourist stop about 85 miles before the U.S. border, at Hell's Gate, which had been closed for the day when we drove by it on the way up in June.
Here the Fraser River narrows to only 115 feet wide. In 1808, explorer Simon Fraser noted in his journal that this was "a place where no human should venture, for surely these are the gates of Hell." The spot was navigable by migrating salmon, and thus a prime indigenous fishing spot; but fur traders and gold seekers had to portage around it. The Canadian Pacific Railway track on the western bank (1885) and the Canadian National Railway track on the eastern bank (1912) destabilized the banks and created landslides through 1914, further clogging and narrowing the river such that salmon could no longer swim upstream against the current. To bring back the salmon there, "safe passage" fishways were constructed from 1946 through 1966. In 1971, the Hell's Gate Airtram, footbridge, observation decks, and fisheries exhibits were completed.
Looking down the Airtram's track cable at Hell's Gate; sockeye salmon info display in the fisheries exhibit; description of fishways; fishways (the water level was pretty low that day) (Hell's Gate Airtram, Boston Bar, British Columbia). There were also very interesting exhibits on the history of the area and the construction of the railways and fishways.
We departed Canada on September 6, 2025, ninety days and 7,000 miles after entering on May 31, 2025. In three months, we had experienced some of the most spectacular scenery and interesting places on earth. Throughout our trip, we tracked the passing time through the life cycle of the fireweed that was everywhere, from early summer bloom to late summer "snowfall" (supposedly six weeks before the first real snowfall):
Fireweed blooms from the bottom to the top of its upper stalk, and is found throughout the north country, especially in disturbed or burned soil (hence its name). As the short summer winds down, the petals wither from bottom to top, leaving behind only the long, thin, colorful seed pods. These will dry and burst, releasing tiny seeds carried by their fluff on the breeze.
It was time to head to warmer climes! But - contrary to what we had first thought this trip would be, a "one and done" - we hope to someday go back again.
In our next blog post: We buy a site in an RV resort in California!
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