Minimum Time to Visit AK from San Francisco?

You could drive your car up to Bellingham, WA and pick up the Alaskan Ferry for a Inside Passage 3-4 day trip stopping at neat little towns along the way, including Juneau. When you reach Alaska you could then rent a RV for a few weeks. You'll miss driving through Canada and the Yukon but you can drive on all the roads in Alaska during that time. Renting is expensive but so is fuel from the long drive from San Francisco.

We've done both ways and enjoyed them both. The Inside Passage trip will give you sights that you can't see by driving as there are no roads to those places.

Any amount of time spent in Alaska is better than not going, IMHO. For the shorter trips, it takes a bit more pre-thinking, etc. about what you want to see and do while in the north country. There are so many ways to do a trip to the north, it becomes very individualized. Have your time planned but stay flexible as changes will happen to you.

Two weeks in state, will get you a good taste of what is available to see and do. I wrote a short bit a couple of years back on renting an RV and using it for a couple of weeks in Alaska. Would work just as well if you drove up. http://www.pajbcooper.com/two_weeks_in_alaska.htm

Take a good honest look at yourself and traveling companions. Are you in good health, full of spit and vinegar, or do you tire out easily after a few hours of driving? The shorter the time you have for the trip, then less time you are going to have to hug your pillow and admire the ceiling of your bedroom.
I figure ten, 10, driving days from south Florida to Fairbanks or about 500 miles a day average, more in the lower 48 and less in Canada and Alaska.
It is about 48 to 50 driving time from Bellingham to Fairbanks, so how you split that up is up to you. You can do five, 5, ten hour driving days to get the fifty hours in or you can take ten days at 5 hours a day. I try to be rolling down the road by 7 AM each day, at the latest. Remember it is light the farther north you go. Everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, decide how you plan to spend yours.

So guessing you are of a good enough health to drive 10 hours a day, figure about a week to get to Alaska and the same to return. Then do the tourist circle for a couple of weeks and with a month, you can have a grand trip. Some of the first or second timers will try to convince you if you can't spend all summer like they did, then don't waste you time going. I totally disagree with them.
They will tell you you can't see everything in a couple of weeks and that is true but you can't see everything if you stay all summer either. Alaska and northern Canada are both huge. I spent 25+ years trying to see it all and never did, but I did wear out 5 airplanes, numerous river boats and RVs trying.

The Alaska Railroad operates a rail barge out of Seattle to Whittier Alaska. The barge deck has rails fastened to it and train cars are loaded on and taken for the trip. They stack containers above the rail deck using gantry cranes. Huge barges. Canadian National Railroad operates a rail barge out of Prince Rupert on what they call the Aqua Rail. They round trip it to Whittier as well. I have shipped vehicles on the Railroad barge south out of Whittier before and found it to be the cheapest way to move heavy freight. No passengers allowed on the trip that I am aware of. Just google "Alasaka Railroad barges' and lots of info on it.

The first trip for most of us, was just a tease, as there are many of us on the forum that are addicted to northern travel. Others were at such an advanced age and poor health, that the one trip is all they will ever make.

I still remember the first driving trip I made north, as a 20 year old. It was the last week of my sophomore year, 1962, of college, my parents were expecting me to work on the family ranch that summer, but I had saved my money that previous winter working, and decided, I think I will drive to Alaska. I have been thankful ever since that I did.

A bit more verbiage I wrote a couple of years back. Must have gotten a good sale price on pixels.

http://www.pajbcooper.com/alaska_trip_recommendations.htm

"So guessing you are of a good enough health to drive 10 hours a day, figure about a week to get to Alaska and the same to return. Then do the tourist circle for a couple of weeks and with a month, you can have a grand trip. Some of the first or second timers will try to convince you if you can't spend all summer like they did, then don't waste you time going. I totally disagree with them.
They will tell you you can't see everything in a couple of weeks and that is true but you can't see everything if you stay all summer either. Alaska and northern Canada are both huge. I spent 25+ years trying to see it all and never did, but I did wear out 5 airplanes, numerous river boats and RVs trying."


Truer words about Alaska were never spoken.....although I've only managed to wear out 1 airplane, 1 lake boat, 5 sno-go's and 3 ATV's. :)

FWIW, I recently made trip up North for 4 days in-state: 12:01 a.m. Saturday through 11:40 p.m. Tuesday for a variety of business issues. I took the 8 hours I had free on Tuesday and spent it driving to/from Talkeetna...Not necessarily the most scenic drive in Alaska but a good combination of good road, some along-the-way scenery, and absolutely spectacular views of McKinley in an around Talkeetna.

Deciding how to get to AK is the issue: there's really no time too short or too long to spend in the Great Land.

We currently take 7 days travel from WA state to Soldotna, and two of them are around 500 mile days, the balance around 350 miles. For comfortable travel you would be looking at 9 or 10 days each way. It is just at 700 miles from here to Chico/Paradise, so add a couple hundred miles to that but it is all travel on I-5. Call it 3,700 miles each way, or more like 9,000 miles including some touring in Alaska. Sort of works out to about 300 miles a day.. The comfort level is your call.

It takes some advance planning but you can drive an RV for the rental fleet from Iowa to Alaska in May and rent it for some added touring. You could simply fly to Anchorage and rent an RV for a couple or three weeks. There is the Ferry and various cruise packages, some of which expect you to fly home so there is an opportunity do some exploration on your own.

Yes, you can have a nice tour of Alaska in 30 days or less, and there are lots of choices in how you do it. Driving round trip from home may not end up at the top of your list.

I could not imagine driving 10 hours a day. Reaching Alaska is just a small part of the trip. Canada and the Yukon have so much to offer and to zip through without stopping would not be my idea of a good trip to Alaska for the first time.

Yes, if you've gone multiple times you could probably do it...but for the first time?

If time is so short I'd much prefer the ferry on the Inside Passage and renting a RV. At least you'd be seeing something in a relaxing way. Just my opinion...

Ok my 2 cents worth. We drove 11,111 miles in 47 days, in May and June 14. That's an avg. of 236 miles a day. We did some long days (600+, 500+) in the lower 48. Once in Canada we tried to keep to less than 300. We broke up the drive from Whitehorse to Tok into 2 days because of the frost heaves.

Once in Alaska we spent 3 days in Talkeetna, 5 days in Anchorage, 4 days in Valdez. A couple of other days in Tok and on the Denali Highway. We would have gone down to the Kenai Pennisula but the smoke from the fire was terrible so we re-distributed our days.

We normally left the CG by 0830 and tried to be parked somewhere by 4 to 5pm. When we got home I was completely exhausted from all the driving. Next time I'll take at least 3 months and do it right. But at the time it was all the vacation I could work up. And it was all the time my daughters had as well.

Point being, there is a TON to see. If you want to spend most of your time in AK and don't mind driving really long days, you can do it in 4-5 weeks but you will be shot by the time you return. There is a lot to see in Canada along the way. It will also make you want to go back and slow WAY down.

There's as much to see in Canada as there is in Alaska. If you're just going to blast through there driving ten hours a day, why waste the money on diesel and your time? If you're not interested in seeing Canada, then leave the MH home, fly to Alaska and rent a MH.

Yes you can do it in four weeks, just slow down and see Canada also. We brought our DP from the driveway in Portland, OR to driveway in Anchorage in 99 hours which included driving (slowly) one night with 3" of snow on the front end. When we took the DP south, we took four weeks.

Four weeks is all you have so come on up an enjoy it. I'd look at it as a scouting trip and with plans to come back a second time. On the second trip I'd load the MH on the Alaska Marine Hwy. I'd book it coming north and taking the MH off in each town for 3 - 5 days until the next ferry shows and then move on up to the next town. Then spend as long as you want in Alaska and enjoy a leisurely trip south through Canada. There's no problem putting large MHs on the ferry, they put tractor trailers on and off in each port.

Bill

Trackrig wrote:
There's as much to see in Canada as there is in Alaska. If you're just going to blast through there driving ten hours a day, why waste the money on diesel and your time? If you're not interested in seeing Canada, then leave the MH home, fly to Alaska and rent a MH.

.

Bill

yep, and there is lots of interesting stuff in the USA before you get to Canada. So if seeing only Alaska is your goal, like it was mine, just fly there and rent a car/RV/whatever.
bumpy

Thanks for the amazing responses. Made for good reading. And it helped clarify what I should do. Given the time required to do this trip well and that I'm limited to vacation weeks at the moment, and I don't want to wait until I retire, I'm going to propose a fly up and rent an RV trip to my wife. And if that goes well and we can't wait to do it again, retirement isn't that far off, we can do the fulltime SF through Canada through AK trip with no worry about time.
Thanks for helping get some solid perspective on this.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to the comments on your post. I sometimes wonder whether it was worth it as the OP just sort of disappears. Enjoy the trip.