Official ALCAN Starting Point

On the longest day of the year, Friday June 21, 2024 at 1:30 PM we arrived at the Northern Lights RV Park & Cabins in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. It took four hours and 23 minutes to drive the 242 miles from Prince George. We have created a new metric for our traveling schedule that we are using to determine our length of stay as we travel to Alaska. One hundred miles traveled in one day equals one overnight stay. Two hundred miles traveled in one day equals two nights, and 300 miles traveled in one day equals a 3 night stay.

Based on this new metric we are staying in Dawson Creek for two nights. We arrived early enough to set up before we all (Sean, Kathy, Karen and I) headed into town to play some disc golf. After that long ride in our vehicles we like to get some walking in and the disc golf course is a great way to get some exercise and have some fun.

Saturday, June 22 we visited the Visitor's Centre and picked up some additional ALCAN traveling resources. We learned that the Dawson Creek Visitor's Centre had a brochure available listing every campground, fuel station, and other important resources for the entire ALCAN route free of charge...all summarized on a single sheet of paper. This single resource was used by many of the YouTubers we watched during our research for this trip.

From there we walked to the farmers market in the parking lot and took our required travel photograph with the gateway sign. Ironically, the actual starting milepost is in the middle of their downtown intersection.

This is now the official starting point of the Alaska Canada Highway. The Alaska Highway was the engineering marvel of World War II and was once described as the largest and most difficult construction project since the Panama Canal. The highway is often referred to as the Alcan Highway, which came from shortening “Alaska and Canada Highway.” The Alcan Highway is the 1382 mile road that connects Dawson Creek, BC in Canada to Delta Junction, Alaska. It is a mostly paved or chip sealed highway, which is open year round and passes through the rugged northern landscape of British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska.

This sign, between the old railroad station which is now Visitor's Centre and the Alberta Pool Elevators building, was very helpful in educating us about the ALCAN but also the origins of Dawson Creek itself. This is just the beginning of a fascinating journey up this historic highway.

Sunday, June 23 we hope to leave Dawson Creek at 9 AM and officially begin our trek up the ALCAN to our first scheduled stop: Sikanni River Campground & RV Park at Mile 162 of the Alaska Hwy in Pink Mountain, BC. We might stay the night, but some of the reviews on our RV Life Trip Wizard don't sound very impressive.

Leaving by 9am gives us more options on how far we travel on any given day. With first light tomorrow at 2:36 AM and sunrise at 4:00 AM, it's easy to get an early start. We will have 18 hours and 26 minutes of daylight at this latitude (55º45.93' N 120º17.38') and the days will only get longer as we travel farther to the north. We are heading to Fairbanks, Alaska (64º50.1' N 147º 46.52') which is our furthest destination to the north. Today in Fairbanks the sunset is at 12:49 AM, and no, that not a mistake! Sunrise is at 2:59 AM, which is a total of 21 hours and 49 minutes of daylight. It will be very interesting to see the midnight sun in person!