How important are resv at campgrounds on Alaska Highway

It simply depends. Depends what time you get off the road. If you get off by mid afternoon, no problem driving in. Depends on weekday or weekend. Weekends the locals are out jut like anywhere else. Depends if there is a holiday weekend of fishing season start. Depnds if you are wanting to get into a high demand CG like Teklaneka in Denali NP. Working around all of that is not hard to wing it with no reservations.

oldtrojan66 wrote:
I am encouraged that others like to dry camp along the way as that was my plan from the beginning.

The most crowded "campgrounds" we saw last summer were the Walmart in Whitehorse, YT, and the Fred Meyer grocery store in Soldotna, AK. There were even unhitched trailers with no TV in sight, people from adjacent RVs sitting in lawn chairs with smoking BBQ grills, and motorhomes with all the slides out at the Walmart. And it was the opening weekend of dipnet season (for Alaska residents only) when we tried to go grocery shopping in Soldotna. We barely found room to park our truck-trailer combo for an hour while we shopped!

BTW, it is legal to camp at roadside parks, rest areas, and pull-offs in Alaska unless it is specifically posted "no overnight camping." There are a lot of paved and gravel pull-outs along Alaska highways that are used by truckers to sleep when they run up against their 8-hour limit and are not anywhere near a town or truck stop. No restrooms and maybe not even a bear-proof trash can, so no conveniences except a wide spot to pull off the highway.

Thanks for the thread. Planning May 1st till ??? in 2015. One huge variable is the accommodations along the way. Like another poster, we can put up with about anything for a bit, and definitely want to conserve resources($) on the trip. I am encouraged that others like to dry camp along the way as that was my plan from the beginning. See www.debidtoalaska.com for more details. I know I started the web site way too early to keep it a daily posting! But I do try to update as stuff happens.

Traveling Summer 2015. June to August

We went to Alaska last summer without a single reservation before we left, even at Denali National Park and on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry. That was because we never knew how far we could travel in a day--road construction, frost-heaved pavement, flat tires, wildlife encounters, and photo stops determined that distance. Only place we didn't get the first campground we tried was on the Kenai Peninsula on the weekend before dipnet season for reds opened. And there we got the second campground we tried.

We did get on-line reservations for Denali-Riley Creek campground 4 days before we got there and for the Jasper-Lake Louise-Banff NP campgrounds about the same length of time in advance. We were in RV parks about half the trip, public campgrounds 1/3 of the trip, and boondocking-dry camping the rest of the time.

We did the Alaska Highway last year leaving Northern Indiana May 19th, we returned August 4th, no reservations that I remember at all. But we were told we were running: "about 2-3 weeks ahead of the caravans". On our return we traveled the Trans Canada Highway from Prince Rupert BC to Kenora Ontario, then re-entered at International Falls MN, again without any reservations.

Every morning when we would hit the road, we knew where we wanted to stay that night...so we would call ahead for reservations. Only in Whitehorse did we have to make a second call as Hi Country Rv Park was full from a huge caravan.

Ron

We did not have reservations, even for the 4th of July. We just wandered around and when we figured out where we were going, I would call ahead and check to see if they had room. I don't recall any cg that we stayed in being completely full. We did have to change sites a couple of times but this was not a problem. Denali would be the exception, but even there you can hang out somewhere a day or two and wait for a site to become available. As I have said before, we have a high tolerance for uncertainty and can put up with almost anything for one night. lizzie

In the years we were tourists in Yukon and Alaska, the only reservation I made was for Teklanika at Denali for the Labor Day long weekend.

We prefer to not stay at commercial campgrounds, instead using the government campgrounds. No services and in Yukon only $12/night with free firewood for the fire ring. Cleanest outhouses in the land too! We also enjoy boondocking along the way, enjoying the peace/quiet and wilderness.

Once a week or so we'd stay in an RV park to clean-up, do laundry, grocery shop, wash the truck, fill the water tank, dump the tanks, etc. Never reserved for those stops. Just pulled in and asked for a spot and handed over $30-$40 for the night.

just wondering what was the cost per night?