Alaska Canadian Highway

Caribou in BC

Road trip! We had a fabulous trip down the Alaska Canadian Highway (the ALCAN) in October. We traveled through 5 states and 2 Canadian provinces in one week’s time!

After winterizing PacSon and putting her up “on the hard” in Skagway, we closed up the cabin in Haines and headed north to Whitehorse in the Yukon. It may seem counter intuitive to head north to get to the lower 48 (the rest of the US outside of Alaska and Hawaii) but that’s the only way to get there by vehicle (unless you put it on a ferry).

Marirose's 18th Bday ski day!
The Haines Highway takes you north into Canada, over the pass to Haines Junction and the ALCAN. The pass is were the Haines crowd gets their ski turns in and we let Marirose know it was a good day for the trip up. She and Dawson’s girlfriend, Sam, came up later that day. They had such a good time that they came back up for a full day of skiing on her 18th birthday a few days later!



From Whitehorse the road turns east/southeast and takes you thru several spectacular Provincial Parks in British Columbia. This is the stretch where we saw the most large mammals – bison, caribou and moose – although there were deer, coyote and fox all along the way south. We had to slow down several times (and even stop) so as not to hit the herds as they crossed the road right in front of us.  
Wood Bison

So cool to see these magnificent creatures up close in their natural environment!

Once we made it back to the states we spent a night with family in Washington, then a day in Oregon at our place in Bend, then south thru the Oregon Outback to Nevada and the eastern Sierra mountains of California. We ended our trip in Southern California at Doug’s folks place in Ojai were we are now preparing for our next adventure – a month long sail with friends down the Baja and into the Sea of Cortez!!!






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