rv to alaska----- campground reservations

Yeah don't worry about the campgrounds, but unless you plan to drive 16 hour days you need longer than 10 days. 10 days will get you from Anchorage to Seattle OK with a rest day somewhere, but those are 8-10 hour days of driving on roads that you really have to pay attention to. Exhausting. Take two weeks from the border and enjoy the trip.

We have made the trip twice now. Only reservations we made were for Teklanika CG in Denali.

For our first trip in 2009 I was still fully employed so had some time constraints. We made it from Huntsville, Alabama area to Tok, Alaska on the eighth day. Will not and did not do that on our second trip this past year. Way too many long days and not nearly enough time to see the multitude of neat places along the way.

It's a great trip. Take your time if at all possible and enjoy.

I'm ready to go again just have to work on the wife (a little).:)

First, if you can, please allow a lot more time to get to Alaska. There is so much to see in Canada and the Yukon before Alaska. Three months is the normal time folks take for this trip. It's a biggy and it's slow driving. Sometimes we only drove 50 miles or so.

The only reservations we made were for the July 4 weekend (Alaskans like to camp, too), and for Teklanika campground in Denali Nat'l Park - the farthest campground you can take your RV. For those we made them about 3 weeks prior when we could better judge where we'd be.

As it turned out, we got near Denali early so we boondocked nearby and at 9am the next morning we drove into Denali and easily secured a spot in Denali's front campground - Riley Creek. This was with a 40' motorhome.

You'll have a much more relaxed trip without reservations. Sitesee and stop at attractions as you drive and pull into a campground early afternoon to relax. There are numerous awesome boondocking spots along the highway, too.

Get a copy of the Milepost, Mike and Terri Church's book, 'Alaskan Camping' and the TourSaver 2/1 coupon book. One glacier cruise (a must) will pay for the book. All can be ordered online.

On this site, there's a 'Clicky' at the very top of the page for Hints on what to do, what to take, etc. on your Alaskan trip. Have a good one!

Thanks for all the comments and help. Maybe I am too excited to get there being my first trip there. Taking a slower pace coming back. Knowing that I may not make as many miles on certain days prompted me to question whether to make or not worry about reservations. I think most comments I received did not think reservations were absolutely necessary. We plan to take about 2 months total travel. Should arrive there ( Tok) in mid June and leave at the end of Aug. We will travel in a class c on a Sprinter Chassis. Thank you all very much.

I'm planning an Alaska trip this summer, too, and don't intend to make any reservations.

We only made a couple of reservations. One was for Denali as we have a big rig and we also made a reservation in Homer but we decided to stay longer and we had to move to another camoground d and we did not make reservations there. We did not make any reservations on the Canada portion of our trip. Only once did we get to a campground and it was full and that was in Dawson Creek. We just found another campground in the area and all was fine. We stayed at a variety of campgrounds: military, Canadian govt, BLM, USFS, natl parks, and commercial. We also dry camped in a couple of commercial campgrounds for a lot less money. We even stayed in a turnout on the Alaska Highway. The first time, no one even came into the turnout while we were there (about 18 hours) and on the return trip, a truck and another RV stopped for a short period right after we arrived and again, no one else came into the turnout. We felt perfectly safe. If you have military privileges, you will be very happy to use the Commissaries as grocery prices are much like those in the lower 48. Had a great time. Driving more than a couple hundred miles a day will be very tiring. It took us 2 weeks to get to Dawson Creek, BC from the border since we did not travel every day. The long daylight hours lull people into driving much longer than they should.