Alaska Bound

[Ol_coot]

Greetings To All, well the time is finally here. We depart for Alaska Wednesday morning. New tires, New brakes, New wheel bearings. Now time to go. Have decided to close my eyes when time to fill-up. And since we will be driving on the top half of tank, will ONLY need half as much...LOL.
Planning to cross border the morning of the 22nd of May at Coutts (Sweetwater) Already logged into AriveCanda with everything. Just need to finalize the night before to cross to obtain our letter code. Planning about 18 days to cross Canada. Taking our time and enjoy that beautiful country.
If you are heading out, keep an eye out for this crazy Texan couple. Pulling a 2002 Cardinal with a 2015 Silverado 2500HD both white. Wave as you go by.
Be safe...Take the time to enjoy the view and meet some really nice people.

[PA12DRVR]

SideHillSoup wrote:
You must realize that northern BC, Alberta and the Yukon have very very little cell service. Wifi can be found in most towns but you have to stop and look for it.
We just went camping 2 hrs from home with no cell service or wifi. Closest town was 25 kms away. There were two small communities close by, but no cell service, and they did have wifi for a price.
Should be noted.
Most small towns have free wifi at tourists Centre's, museums and library’s. How ever the communities I was near were to small for any of those facilities.
I will also mention we live 3 hrs from Spokane Washington and we were another 2 hrs north west of our home, so not that far north at all.
He most likely won’t make another comment until Whitehorse or once he gets into Alaska.
Happy Trails everyone
Soup.

My last trip through Canada was back in 2018, also in mid-late May, which in turn was 8 years or so since the previous trip. What the wife and I found was that, despite kids and grandkids wanting updates, once we crossed the border (heck, once we got into northern Idaho), we were simply too busy enjoying being on the Alcan again and enjoying spring in the North Country to chase up the limited cell / wi-fi / internet access until (as Soup indicated) we got to a significant town. As I recall, we checked in from Edmonton, Watson Lake, and Whitehorse. In between, if the choice was taking a hike or chasing down internet, chasing down the internet lost that particular debate.

[SideHillSoup]

You must realize that northern BC, Alberta and the Yukon have very very little cell service. Wifi can be found in most towns but you have to stop and look for it.
We just went camping 2 hrs from home with no cell service or wifi. Closest town was 25 kms away. There were two small communities close by, but no cell service, and they did have wifi for a price.
Should be noted.
Most small towns have free wifi at tourists Centre's, museums and library’s. How ever the communities I was near were to small for any of those facilities.
I will also mention we live 3 hrs from Spokane Washington and we were another 2 hrs north west of our home, so not that far north at all.
He most likely won’t make another comment until Whitehorse or once he gets into Alaska.
Happy Trails everyone
Soup.

[sljohnson1938]

it has been two weeks since the OP. i hope all is well.

[2g_s]

OP: It would be great if you posted every so often along with any others making the trip. It would be good to hear of your travels... good and bad. There used to be a yearly post in this section by those traveling to Alaska. I found it to be very interesting to follow along. Many contributed to it and it helped others while traveling. Have a good trip!

[charlestonsouth]

Rigdon, it wasn't quite clear to me; was that 40 minutes to get through the Canadian border or the US border into Alaska?

[Crowe]

Thanks for mentioning ArriveCanada. We are heading to New Brunswick in June and will need to fill out the info as well.

[IB853347201]

Ol'coot wrote:
"Have decided to close my eyes when time to fill-up."

Great plan...That's what I did every time we stopped for gas all the way back from Texas....LOL

[Rigdon]

We just made that crossing into Alaska, some fuel stations were open but we have an auxiliary fuel tank.
It took about 40 minutes to get to the border just from the cars waiting in line. Highest diesel price we saw was 8.20 CD.

[routeforty]

Make sure you do some(or many) trip reports with pics for those of us staying in the lower 48. 🙂