Once you’ve driven the Alaska Highway, and arrived in Fairbanks (or wherever), what’s next? You’re not going to turn around and go home without seeing the sights, but Alaska is breathtakingly huge, so how do you prioritize your possibilities? Fortunately, or unfortunately, if you’re traveling by road, the highway system in our 49th state narrows those possibilities for you, rather dramatically. Despite it’s size, there are fewer miles of roads in Alaska than in any other state. 99.9% of the land is still untamed wilderness–hundreds of thousands of square miles of trees, ice-clad mountains, rivers, lakes, and tundra. If you look very closely at a map, you’ll see a few tiny towns in the interior, but it would be impossibly expensive to connect them by road; instead, most travel is by air. If a village has as many as ten people, it will also have an airstrip, and, while there may be fewer roads, Alaska boasts more small planes per capita than anywhere else in the world. Coastal communities are, of course, accessible by boat, as are those towns in the interior near the larger rivers, (at least, in the warmer months), but either way, you’re never (ever) going to get there in your minivan. The long list of populated places in Alaska that are nowhere near the state’s highway system includes Juneau, the state capital, as well as Ketchikan, Sitka, and Nome. Skagway is a special case: you can drive there from Canada, but not from anywhere in Alaska!

So what does that leave us? Quite a lot, actually, and here’s the good news: most of the major towns in Alaska, as well as many of the state’s most scenic locations, can all be reached by driving what I call Alaska’s Grand Circle: a loop route beginning in Tok that utilizes all four segments (1082 miles) of Alaska’s Interstate Highway system: Tok to Fairbanks on AK-2 (Interstate A-2); Fairbanks to Gateway (near Anchorage) on AK-3 (Interstate A-4); Anchorage to Soldotna on AK-1 (Interstate A-3); and Anchorage back to Tok on AK-1(Interstate A-1).  Besides all the cities and towns, the Grand Circle takes you to Denali, Kenai Fjords, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Parks.

Touching on both Seward and Homer in the Kenai brings the total distance covered on that rough circle to a bit more than 1,400 miles, which is a minimum of 27 hours on the road, not counting stops or delays. (Trust me–there will be plenty of both!)

Depending on how much time you have, and how much you want to see, you can add spurs to the circle, and cover every important highway in Alaska as extensions off that base route. (Technically, both Anchorage and the Kenai are on a spur off the main circle, but that’s one extension that shouldn’t be considered optional.)  The greater portion of the base route is a divided, multi-lane, limited access road built to Interstate Highway standards. Other sections are State Highways with one lane in each direction, and when you get off on the extensions you’ll run into pavement that’s not so well maintained (lots of potholes and frost heaves), as well as long stretches of dirt and gravel. Many of the smaller roads are seasonal, closed in the winter (which, in Alaska, is most of the year).  The summer is generally safe, but once you get to the cold months–late September all the way into May–travel on many of Alaska’s highways can be dangerous. Always check 511.Alaska.gov before starting out into any remote area.

CLICK MAPS AND PHOTOS FOR AN EXPANDED VIEW

I drove in on the Alaska Highway, from Beaver Creek, Yukon to Tok, and then on to Fairbanks, the first leg of the Grand Circle. From Fairbanks, I took a little side trip up to Chena Hot Springs and back, and then followed the Circle counter-clockwise, to Denali National Park, Anchorage, then Seward, Kenai Fjords National Park, and Homer on the Kenai Peninsula. From there, back north through Palmer to Glenallen, which I used as my base for two forays by road into Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Driving on to Tok completed the Circle, but I added one last extension: I turned north to Chicken, and then drove the Top of the World Highway, which took me back out of Alaska, and on to Dawson City, Yukon. My total distance covered along this route was about 2,000 miles, spread over three weeks. That was a comfortable pace. Rarely more than 5 or 6 hours of driving in any one day, and plenty of time for exploring and sightseeing. 

That said, there’s never enough time for everything on a road trip, and there were three optional extensions I seriously considered, but, regrettably, chose not to drive:

The McCarthy Road in Wrangell St. Elias National Park: a mostly dirt road that takes you from Chitina to tiny McCarthy, access point to Kennecott, an abandoned mining town and historical site that’s frozen in time, and isolated as the dickens. It’s a 250 mile round trip from Glenallen, and you need to allow at least a full day. I got as far as Chitina, about halfway, when I realized I didn’t have enough fuel to get all the way to McCarthy and back, and the closest gas was sixty miles behind me, back in Glenallen.

The Steese Highway, 161 miles of mostly gravel road from Fairbanks to Circle, where there is a hot spring. Circle is just 50 miles from the Arctic Circle. The route is said to be quite beautiful, but, again–it’s gravel!

The Taylor Highway, 160 miles of partly paved, partly gravel road from Tetlin Junction, near Tok, through Chicken, up to the tiny community of Eagle. I actually did drive most of that route, but I missed the last 62 miles, when the Taylor turns north from the Top of the World, the rest of the way to Eagle. And why not? Gravel!

There are other lesser roads, of course, that can’t really be considered highways, but I believe I’ve listed all the majors, and I should reiterate that all of these roads, without exception, connect to the Grand Circle. You can easily add any, all, or none of them to your own Alaskan Road Trip, depending on how much time you have, and how many miles you don’t mind driving into some seriously remote countryside.

When it comes to road trips, I’ve had far more experience than most, having traveled exensively by road on four different continents, over the course of more than half a century. I even have a book to my credit: RoadTrip America’s Arizona and New Mexico: 25 Scenic Side Trips, all of which makes me something of an authority on the subject. That, along with about $3.00, will barely buy me a cup of coffee, but it does mean that when I say this, it’s a statement that should be taken seriously: (Ahem): “My Alaska Road Trip was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done!” Period; full stop.

Click any photo in this post to stop the slide shows and expand the images to full screen.

To return to the previous post, or to read the first post of my Alaska Road Trip series, click the buttons below:

Some of the text and many of the photos in my Alaska Highway series first appeared on RoadTrip America’s website. A few years ago, I posted a detailed account of my entire 57 day, 13,000 mile “Mother of All Road Trips,” and RTA has kept that account available in their archive of Field Reports. If you’d like to read it, the link below will take you there:

MORE ABOUT THE ALASKA HIGHWAY:

This is an interactive Table of Contents. Click the pictures to open the pages.

Alaska Road Trip

A few years ago I wrote a book about road trips in Arizona and New Mexico that’s a lot like this website, packed with interesting information, and illustrated with beautiful photographs. Check it out! You can find it on Amazon, and at all other major booksellers.