Destination: Arctic Ocean

The last several years we have discussed the idea of traveling the famous Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay Alaska to visit the Arctic Ocean so this year we are going to make that dream a reality. We left southern Arizona today and over the next several weeks will slowly make our way up to the Arctic. One additional benefit of this trip is we will go to the most northern point on the North American highway system.

The plan is to slowly make our way up through Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington entering Canada at the Osoyoos crossing in British Columbia. On the way up to Alaska we will take the western route along the Cassiar Highway joining the Alaska Highway near Watson Lake Yukon. We will continue on to Whitehorse Yukon, which is the capitol of the Yukon Territory. If the weather is decent, we plan to continue north to Dawson City, which is a famous gold rush town. We will then continue on the Top of the World highway into Alaska. In Alaska, we first plan to visit Valdez on the southern coast before heading up to Fairbanks. From Fairbanks we will head on north up the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Ocean.

Our original plan was to leave the RV in Fairbanks and continue on up the Dalton in our truck but the more research we did the more concerned we were taking our vehicle all the way up given the sketchy road conditions. We did some searching and finally find a car rental company in Fairbanks that rented trucks specifically for the Dalton. As we looked more into the rental idea, we discovered that by the time you rented the truck, purchased all the special insurance you needed, and rented a sat phone the price was almost as much as some of the tour packages from Fairbanks to the Arctic Ocean. Therefore, in the end we booked a 3-day tour with Northern Alaska Tour Company. They will fly us to Deadhorse in a small bush type airplane and then take us in a van to Prudhoe Bay to visit the ocean and the north slope oilfields. (Prudhoe Bay is a company town and is only accessible via tour van). We will spend the night in Deadhorse before heading down the Dalton Highway toward Fairbanks in a van the next day. The second day we will drive from Deadhorse through the Brooks Range and over Atigun Pass before spending the night in Coldfoot at about the halfway point. The third day we will continue on south arriving in Fairbanks in the evening. As much as we would like to drive all the way up the tour option, is the safest and made the most since.

After completing the Arctic Ocean visit, we will start slowly heading home. The plan is to take the eastern route home going through Watson Lake, Dawson Creek, Edmonton, and Calgary before re-entering the US at the Sweet Grass Crossing in Montana. From there it will be a fairly quick trip on home. We really love the Yukon and northern BC area so we plan to spend several extra days along the way enjoying the scenery and doing a little kayaking on some of the beautiful remote lakes.

All total we expect to be out about 7 weeks and cover nearly 10000 miles. We plan to update this blog every few days and hopefully produce a few YouTube videos along the way.