Anyone been to Alaksa?

[+NickandAliandEliza]

Has anyone been to Alaska?

 

Are there any must do caches, trips or places to visit? We'll mainly been in the South Central area (I think) - but will also go as far North as Denali or Fairbanks (Or even further North depending on what sort of roads the RV company will let us drive on!). Possibly also take in Western Yukon in Canada.

 

Has anyone driven a 30' motorhome?? How easy is it to drive?

 

Vancouver and Seattle - any must do caches is these cities?

 

Thanks.

 

PS, and yes I know this is the UK forum - but I like to get the UK cachers prospective first.

[+Madam Cholet]

Has anyone been to Alaska?

 

Are there any must do caches, trips or places to visit? We'll mainly been in the South Central area (I think) - but will also go as far North as Denali or Fairbanks (Or even further North depending on what sort of roads the RV company will let us drive on!). Possibly also take in Western Yukon in Canada.

 

Has anyone driven a 30' motorhome?? How easy is it to drive?

 

Vancouver and Seattle - any must do caches is these cities?

 

Thanks.

 

PS, and yes I know this is the UK forum - but I like to get the UK cachers prospective first.

 

Hi,

 

I've driven from Fairbanks to Anchorage and then down the Kenai peninsula to Homer. I did it in a car, though, and not a motorhome. The roads are good but get busy in the summer with convoys of motorhomes. Go out along Homer spit, "A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem." There was a lady who, until she passed away last year, fed the eagles and it was an incredible place to see Bald Eagles in large numbers. I imagine they are still around.

 

I have also travelled pretty much the entire Yukon as I go out there every year for 3 weeks. As you've probably seen, apart from in Whitehorse there are not many caches around. If you do get to Whitehorse though, contact Ladybug JMC. She has a few caches in the area, took me to visit several of them and then cooked me dinner.

 

It might be a stretch as I don't know how long you are going for but the drive from Whitehorse to Skagway is one of the most incredible I've ever done.

 

I didn't rate Fairbanks very much as it's just an extension of an Air Force base but Anchorage is very nice.

 

Let me know if you need more.

[+NickandAliandEliza]

Thanks for that. The convoys of motorhomes are a bit worrying though. We are going for about 3 weeks - last two weeks in June to the first week or so in July. I thought June wouldn't be too bad for traffic / visitor numbers. We are going for the wilderness / get away from it all bit and don't like the idea of ending up in some Disney-land scenario.........

Edited February 24, 2010 by Nick & Ali

[+hobgoblinkiteflier]

I've been to Alaska! But it was only for a long weekend!

 

In my previous job I got the "mission" of helping to install some new gas detection equipment at an oil installation in Prudhoe Bay. It was January 2001, but well before geocaching for me unfortunately. After flying into Anchorage, the next day I got the BP charter to Deadhorse where it was permantly dark, blowing a gale and -20C. We got a tracked vehicle a few miles over the ice to the gravel island where the equipment was to be installed. Anyway, it would have been a great experience if it wasn't for the 9hrs jet-lag which hit me badly.

 

It would be great to go back and drive up the Dalton Highway. I see there are a handful of caches beyond 70degrees North.

 

Have a good trip!

[tiiiim]

Has anyone been to Alaska?

 

Are there any must do caches, trips or places to visit? We'll mainly been in the South Central area (I think) - but will also go as far North as Denali or Fairbanks (Or even further North depending on what sort of roads the RV company will let us drive on!). Possibly also take in Western Yukon in Canada.

 

Has anyone driven a 30' motorhome?? How easy is it to drive?

 

Vancouver and Seattle - any must do caches is these cities?

 

Thanks.

 

PS, and yes I know this is the UK forum - but I like to get the UK cachers prospective first.

 

We undertook a mammoth 10000km road trip last summer, starting in Calgary, AB, to Vancouver, BC, up the Inside Passage (...still makes me giggle!) to Prince Rupert BC. Then north past Dease Lake (some caches there - also stopped off in Stewart) into the Yukon, then west over to Whitehorse (along the Alaska highway). At Whitehorse we hired one of those 30ft RV monsters and trekked over to Haines Junction (there's a cache near there which hasn't been found in a few years) and further to Tok in Alaska. From Tok we headed North along the Taylor highway to a place called Chicken (a few caches there) and further up past the Top-of-the-World highway. The Taylor highway past the TotW highway is a bit hit-and-miss, but the RV is such a monster it shouldn't be a problem (make sure you know where the spare wheel is!)

 

We then came back down and followed the TotW highway back into the Yukon to Dawson City (by the way, Whitehorse and Dawson City are fairly interesting, the latter more than the former. From Dawson we took the Dempster Highway all the way north past the Arctic circle and into the North-West-Territories. If you can, you MUST do this road (even if the RV brochures advise against it!) - the scenery and wildlife is just unbelievable. Be careful when driving it though - we didn't have any trouble, but passed a few cars with flat tyres. We were also the only RV on that road at the time!

 

Once into NWT, we turned back round (only one road!) and headed back to Dawson, from where we headed back to Whitehorse and then back to Calgary. The distances are immense. We were glad to have the caches dotted around to break the journey from time to time. A few things to remember with an RV:

 

1) 30ft is HUGE. No, really, HUGE! And wide. And it has a reversing alarm, which I thought was cool!

2) Never, ever, ever let your petrol tank fall below half empty. Many stretches of road have signs saying things like - "Next Gas - 100km", and that will be for a small shanty shack in the middle of no-where with a handpump. Often these are abandoned so be very prepared!

3) Don't worry about where to sleep - just park the RV in a layby and you're set. There are self-service campgrounds also dotted around with "pull-through's" - a spot which you can drive into with a huge RV and can drive out of forwards (i.e. no reversing).

4) When driving, an RV is quite noisy on the inside, and things tend to rattle around quite a lot (this was obviously a hire RV). It might seem obvious, but we weren't quite prepared for how noisy it was. Driving along the gravel roads is even noisier!

5) GET 'THE MILEPOST'. Seriously, you can forget everything else, but GET 'THE MILEPOST'. Here, I'll even provide a link: http://milepost.com/. It tells you where every single petrol station, campground, shack etc etc is located, distances from anywhere to anywhere, and points of interest (and there's millions) along the way. The POI's are described by their distance from a certain location (to the 0.1 mile) along a certain road, and all roads have mile markers (also to the 0.1 mile) so you'll NEVER get lost!! Get The Milepost. Get The Milepost. Get The Milepost.

 

We went end July and all of August. Do not worry about the number of people. Yes, there's many, but the place is so big we often went a whole day and only saw a handful of cars and RV's driving past (obviously not true when you get to the urban areas!)

 

Oh, we also did Vancouver Island - if you're close by, definitely go and explore the south western coastline.

 

That's all I can think of for now....

 

P.S. I tracked the entire journey and now have 1 second resolution GPX files for the entire thing - I'll send you a Google Earth kml file if you're interested.

 

P.P.S If you check my cache history, all the caches we found and DNF'd are basically all the caches available along these routes from Stewart northwards.

 

P.P.P.S. Have fun. Get The Milepost.

Edited February 24, 2010 by tiiiim

[+Longfram Kev]

If you're wanting to go up / down the Dalton Highway and visit DeadHorse watch Ice Road Truckers it'll give you hints on driving LoL :-)