In between poking around Arkansas and driving through rivers, we’ve figured out a lot for the AlCan ride. As of last writing, we’d picked our endpoint and laid out a bunch of options, leaving some big questions to finish it up:
- Do we take the Prince Rupert ferry or take the highway through Vancouver?
- Should we drive all of AlCan Highway proper, or take some of the Cassiar Highway?
- Do we want any beach days, and where?
The most consequential decision, by far, was whether or not we take the Prince Rupert ferry through the inside passage. That would dictate whether we revisit Port Angeles (the 2015 finish line) and also put a thumb on the scale in favor of the Cassiar Highway. It is also the riskiest option, logistically complex, involves a 4 a.m. wakeup call, and it is ruinously expensive.
Therefore, our choice is clear: we will take the ferry.
The Route!
We’ll start in Seattle then head back over toward Port Angeles and cross into Canada by ferry, landing in Victoria, BC.
Then we drive up Vancouver Island to Port Hardy for the eighteen hour all-day ferry ride to Prince Rupert. From there, the road inland looks incredible as it winds along the Skeena River through mountains and forests. At Kitwanga (more or less), we’ll join up with the Cassiar Highway.
We’ll follow the Cassiar Highway until its northern (and original) terminal at the AlCan Highway around Watson Lake in Yukon. The midpoint of this journey (in days, not miles necessarily) is Whitehorse, the capital city of Yukon and its largest city by far at 25,000 residents.
The 2016 census reported a Yukon population of 35,874, an increase of 5.8% from 2011.[2] With a land area of 474,712.64 km2 (183,287.57 sq mi), it had a population density of 0.1/km2 (0.2/sq mi) in 2011.
The city is situated along a river and looks like a lovely place to take a day off. Conveniently, because it is the only “large” city in wide rural surroundings, it has robust services for a city of its size, in the rare case that we need car parts. 🙃
From there, we head back into the US at the Alcan/Beaver Creek Border Crossing. Assuming they’ll let us in. That’s currently a not-entirely-straightforward question we’re researching.
The Alaskan segment is still a bit open ended. At the moment, we’re planning to continue on to Delta Junction, cut south, then head west toward Denali State Park, and finally down into Anchorage.
The Schedule!
We’ve narrowed it down to two schedule options based on a handful of conflicting constraints:
- George, having twice needed substantial service at the start line, pointed out the value of having a weekday in the starting city (or thereabouts) for any last minute repairs.
- Buying and selling cars private party is easier on a week end, but dealing with a dealer, commercial buyer, nonprofit donation broker, or scrap yard is much easier on a week day.
- We want to avoid assuming that the Canadian (and US…) border crossings would happen quickly, given rising tensions at borders everywhere. And that we’ll likely have to explain why these cars would be new to us.
- The Prince Rupert ferry only runs on even numbered days in the summer.
- A coworker informed me that Labour Day is a real “Statutory Holiday” in Canada, so like back home, many businesses will be closed.
- Most flights from Anchorage back to Austin or Tulsa are overnight red-eyes.
- Among us, we have to consolidate this into a limited window of vacation days, knowing: Labo(u)r Day is a freebie, Evan can occasionally vanish early, I can work remotely but workdays are full-days, and George’s employer is moving to a new PTO management system so nothing is certain. That has led to a back-and-forth of “one or two days, plus two weeks, plus zero or one day minus one bank day plus…?” The whole bourbon-soaked squabble sounded a lot like that scene from Clue, but I think we’re close to having it figured out.
And when considering the “work remotely at the start or end” option, I have already cheated that way…
So that leaves us at:
Ultimately, we’ve boiled down the two best options to:
- Arrive on a Thursday night to spend Friday and Saturday in Seattle to buy cars and hit the road. We’d have a full-day Monday in Victoria for car needs and sightseeing before a Tuesday drive up the island for a Wednesday ferry. Our beach day in Whitehorse would be on Labour Day. We’d arrive into Anchorage on a Saturday night and have Sunday and Monday to sell cars before flying out on a Monday night red-eye arriving home on a Tuesday.
- Arrive on a Wednesday night to spend Thursday and Friday in Seattle to buy cars. We’d get to Victoria on a Saturday for just the night, then drive to Port Hardy on the Sunday for a Monday ferry. Our beach Day in Whitehorse would be on a Saturday. We’d arrive into Anchorage on a Thursday night, leaving Friday and Saturday to sell cars and fly out Saturday (or Sunday?) night on the red-eye.
So I think we have no bad option here, but we do need to pick one. I think we’ve got enough info consolidated into two solid ideas that we should be able to nail it down this week. Then we dive into sightseeing, hiking, weird local stuff, exciting places to stay, and cars. And that’s the fun part.