Roll Call Alaska 2014

[sljohnson1938]

Anyone traveling to Alaska in 2014? We ,my wife and I, are planning a trip and was wondering if anyone is planning on going in 2014 also.
Would go this year, except we have two weddings to go to in MI, one in late June the other in early August.
So next year we are planning to leave home in NC in mid July, we plan a 2 month trip. We were there in 2004, only that time we were with paid RV tour. Loved it, and would take another paid tour in a 'heart beat', but the cost is now too much.
The reason for the mid July date is looking at the 2013 Alaska postings the wx, road conditions and insects are at their worst. Later in the season all three are better. Plus I want to travel back on the Cassiar Hwy in Sept is supposed to be the best time of the year on the Cassiar, plus less travelers.
Finally, money is an issue with us. So we will 'boon dock', stay at
free or low cost CG's, rest areas, etc. when ever possible.


Hope you all have a great trip and hope to see you some where along the way.

[3939site21]

Here are three more sites to add to the information list for traveling. I use these when I decide that it is time for me to proceed back home to Anchorage each year. The first is road conditions in the Yukon Territory. The second is road cameras in British Columbia. The third will assist for road construction in BC.

http://www.511yukon.ca/

http://images.drivebc.ca/bchighwaycam/pub/html/www/index-Northern.html

http://www.drivebc.ca/#mapView&z=7&ll=60.940192%2C-126.37342

Be safe. If you are going on I5 in WA toward Canada, there is an RV Park (Bellingham RV Park) just 20 minutes from the border at exit 258.

[Veebyes]

CA Traveler wrote:
Recommend Deep Creek Beach SP for at least one night for a very unique boat launching operation. Also we watched eagles for hours. No hookups. Also this is closer to the halilbut fishing grounds than Homer. Click here.

Deep Creek is worth at least a 2 or 3 nights. Homer is an easy enough round trip for a day & hanging around the beach is worth a day to watch the boats & taking pics of the eagles. If you have 4WD take a drive past the west end of the beach at low tide. Ninilchik itself is good for at least a few hours for the church & village. With good weather the view across Cook Inlet is priceless.

[terrax]

VegaSaurus wrote:

terrax wrote:

In the meantime we have added more features that are, hopefully, of good use for RVers coming to the North. Ones you are up here you can find

• gas stations
• free wifi hot spots
• rv parks
• campgrounds
• dump stations
• attractions

near your current location. Just type www.rvnorth.com into the browsers address bar (as you would do to access any other website) and you are good to go. Hope that helps.
See you soon in the North.

Stephan, another suggestion is to add a list of "scheduled" road construction areas in BC and the Yukon. Current driving conditions help but for trip planning it would be nice to know areas to avoid if at all possible. Your road conditions tab is also helpful but doesn't let you know that they are planning to tear up a certain area next month.

I'm not exactly sure where that information is but I was told it's available online somewhere. And since you usually have to go through BC to get to the Yukon adding a tab for scheduled construction in BC would kind of be appropriate.

Recently we were camping in Florida by to a lady cg host from AK and she was telling us how her brother came up to see her one year and was stuck in road construction where he went 40 miles in 18 hours. If he had checked the scheduled road construction he could have avoided that area.

Just a suggestion. Thanks

Jim & Yvonne
Clearwater, Fl
(We moved up our departure date to April 28th and need to start planning !!!)

Hi Jim & Yvonne,

great idea. I will add this as soon as the 2014 schedules are available for the Yukon, so highway travellers have one convenient place to look up all the information they are interested in.

Regarding BC:

rvnorth.com was just released in January 2014. So for this year we will cover only the Yukon and see how much interest is in using our app. The future plan is to cover the entire North.

Thanks for you interest and feedback

[sue_t]

March 2014 fuel and propane prices in Yukon, by community
http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/stats/pdf/fuel_mar14.pdf

One station in Whitehorse reduced their price of Regular fuel to $1.309 this past week. The other stations remained higher.

[stonekeepers]

Add us to the list:

Stan & Ramona (Stonekeepers), Readyville, TN should be in Alaska sometime in May

[sheltieRV]

sue.t wrote:
For the Vancouver-Whistler-Pemberton-Lillooet section of your trip, and particularly the Pemberton to Lillooet leg, ensure your brakes and cooling system are in good order.

Ours were, BUT the brakes still overheated on the fifth wheel and the truck brakes had to do the job.

I love the way Chevy has married the transmission and engine together, they work together to keep speeds down. 60k miles on truck and probably 15k on trailer and never been through a set of brake pads. Looking forward to those 12% grades!

[sue_t]

CA Traveler wrote:
Sue's great and detailed information was much appreciated last year. Thanks again for all of the information. Aren't you heading the Board of Directors for Yukon Tourism? :@

Tourism Yukon (http://travelyukon.com/) is a government office. They couldn't handle someone who just tells it like it is with no fluff or pomp. :R

[VegaSaurus]

sue.t wrote:
The roads break down with spring thaw so some of the construction areas aren't known until the ground has thawed and the pavement broken. The highway construction reports are posted here:
http://www.hpw.gov.yk.ca/trans/engineering/bridgeconstruction.html

You can see road reports at:
http://www.511yukon.ca/
http://www.drivebc.ca/

It is hard to avoid a road closure or construction zone when there is only one route to take. Although in Yukon, if the AK Hwy is closed west of Whitehorse the North Klondike is an option if you're headed to Alaska.

If you're on the Cassiar and it is closed for a flood, the detour BACK and then around on the Alaska Highway is a long one. Cassiar is known to close for a day or days due to conditions (floods or fires).

Yukon doesn't announce its pending construction until spring. But, based on news reports and RFPs/tenders put out, avoid the Campbell Highway in Yukon this year.

Thanks for the links and info Sue. Very helpful !
Jim

[sue_t]

sheltieRV wrote:
We are leaving from Northern CA in Mid May heading up through Vancouver and Whistler (couldn't resist tackling that old logging highway) to the Cassiar.

For the Vancouver-Whistler-Pemberton-Lillooet section of your trip, and particularly the Pemberton to Lillooet leg, ensure your brakes and cooling system are in good order.

Ours were, BUT the brakes still overheated on the fifth wheel and the truck brakes had to do the job. Truck brakes also overheated and were warm for a long while after we reached the campground, but they did the job. Thankfully. Guess I shouldn't have been pressing the imaginary passenger brake pedal quite so hard but when you're on steep declines with an 25' fifth wheel behind you and ONLY the truck brakes are effective, I felt I needed to do something besides hold my breath!

Here's our last trip through in 2009, travelling Lillooet to Pemberton: http://suethomas.ca/20090917_LLH-Pemberton.html

Another trip with just our truck back in the 1990s, blew the head gasket by overheating on the way uphill.

Here's the profile from the GPS for the Lillooet-Pemberton section:

[sheltieRV]

GarySandra wrote:
- I tried to get all that said they were Alaska 2014. For those I missed, let it be known so I or someone else can get you listed. For those who want off the list let us know. Looks like we have a group from all over the country. See you on the Alcan.

We are leaving from Northern CA in Mid May heading up through Vancouver and Whistler (couldn't resist tackling that old logging highway) to the Cassiar.

[CA_Traveler]

FWIW We planned to take TOW on the return trip. I wasn't concerned about the 120 miles of dirt and gravel. But with a heavy rig I did get concerned about the soft shoulders and idiot RVs that take their half out of the middle as reported on these boards and discussions with fellow RVers. But the diversion to Haines and ferry to Skagway was also fantastic. Maybe TOW next time.

[Teacher_s_Pet]

We purchased a Spot Connect (gps locator and flash e-mail) and leased a satellite phone for our trip last summer. We were able to let family and friends know where we were, without in-bound communication with the Spot and the satellite phone for possible emergencies. Used the Spot daily, satellite phone was only used for a brief call to make sure it functioned on the Alaska Highway. Satellite phones are expensive to lease, as is the air-time. If you are traveling in a group, you could split the cost among the RVs.

[CA_Traveler]

Sue's great and detailed information was much appreciated last year. Thanks again for all of the information. Aren't you heading the Board of Directors for Yukon Tourism? :@

We were able to use some CG WiFi which proved useful to help with the website in the above link. And there were days when I'd queue the updates until the next WiFi availability.

[sue_t]

Gotta remind folks that you won't have cellular service or internet in many areas in northern BC and Yukon, and Alaska.

Along the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek, Ft St John, Ft Nelson, Watson Lake, Whitehorse and Haines Junction have either 3G or 4G service.

Teslin, Destruction Bay, Beaver Creek have only CDMA service and you'll need a CDMA compatible device to be connected. We deliberately purchased older technology smartphones so we could use them in all the communities.

On the Klondike Highway, Dawson City has 4G service. The rest of the communities-Carmacks, Pelly, Stewart River-have only CDMA.

There is no service between the communities along the highways.

For the Cassiar Hwy, there is no service between Smithers BC and Watson Lake YT. There is one small service area along Hwy 16, west of Smithers, but the Cassiar Highway has absolutely no cellular service.

[CA_Traveler]

Recommend Deep Creek Beach SP for at least one night for a very unique boat launching operation. Also we watched eagles for hours. No hookups. Also this is closer to the halilbut fishing grounds than Homer. Click here.