Ron Dalby - Guide to the Alaska Highway: Your Complete Driving Guide

Third Edition

Copyright 2017 by Ron Dalby

All rights reserved

Published by Menasha Ridge Press

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Printed in the United States of America

Third edition, first printing

Cover and interior design: Lora Westberg

Cover and interior photographs: Ron Dalby and stock

Cartography: Steve Jones

Indexer: Ann Cassar

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Dalby, Ron, 1949- author.

Title: Guide to the Alaska highway / Ron Dalby.

Description: Third edition. | Birmingham, Alabama : Menasha Ridge Press, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039863 | ISBN 9781634040884 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: AlaskaGuidebooks. | Alaska HighwayGuidebooks. | Automobile travelAlaska HighwayGuidebooks. | Northwest, CanadianGuidebooks. | BISAC: TRAVEL / United States / West / Pacific (AK, CA, HI, NV, OR, WA). | TRANSPORTATION / Navigation.

Classification: LCC F902.3 .D354 2017 | DDC 917.9804/5dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039863

ISBN 978-1-63404-088-4; eISBN 978-1-63404-089-1

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To Chris Dalby, who rests forever in the Yukon near our favorite fishing hole.

Ron Dalby grew up on the American road. He was but a year old in 1950 when he made his first trip down the Alaska Highway. Throughout the rest of his formative years, he crisscrossed the United States countless times as his father, a career army officer, moved from assignment to assignment.

The urge to travel Americas roads never left him. Annual forays in Rons RV have led from his home in Alaska to as far away as Florida and almost everywhere in between. The RV is a perfect match for his itchy foot, and over the years he has owned or used one of every type available.

Ron has worked as a writer and editor for nearly three decades, both as a freelancer and on the staff of various publications. He served as editor of Alaska Magazine during the most successful period in its long history and has authored thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and five books. His most successful book, The Alaska Highway: An Insiders Guide, though out of print for nearly a decade, is still available on Amazon.coms used book list. This early-1990s book has been replaced with this Guide to the Alaska Highway. All of his writings are illustrated by photos he has taken himself.

As a young adult, Ron served two tours as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and later worked in Alaska as a military test pilot. He has made dramatic rescues of injured climbers on Mount McKinley (officially renamed Denali in 2015) and flown thousands of hours throughout the wilderness of Alaska, both in the military and as a civilian pilot.

He has been married for 46 years to the former Jennifer Durland of Milwaukie, Oregon. She shares his love of travel and adventure and has more than once picked up on stories he might otherwise have missed. They have two grown children, Eric and Tiffany, four granddaughters, and a grandson.

This book, like most others, has a single name on the cover as the author. However, just about anyone who has ever written a book will tell you that an author has a lot of help. Without that help, there wouldnt be many books.

Starting with the first edition of this book, which came out in 1991, Ive been helped along the way by people of every description. Certainly those thousands of people Ive met along the Alaska Highway in the past 44 years contributed in some waylarge or smallto this book. Even if I could remember all of their names, there isnt space to list them here. Without these people the Alaska Highway would be just another road. Let it suffice to say that Ive never had a negative experience with any of the people Ive met along the road in Canada and Alaska. And if the highlight of any travel experience is the people you meet, these folks make my travels along the Alaska Highway the grandest experiences of my life.

The one person I cant get away from listing by name is my daughter, Tiffany. As a teenager she kept the running logs and notes as I drove some 6,000 miles of often less-than-perfect roads. Now, as an adult and a competent writer/editor in her own right, she edited Dads copy and in general provided the push needed to get this book into the hands of the people who need and want to read it. She is truly the one person besides the author who brought this book to reality.

Finally, there is my wife, Jennifer. She puts up with a lot (me) without ever losing her sense of humor or sense of adventure.

I first saw the Alaska Highwaythen almost universally known as the Alcanin August 1950, from the backseat of a two-door, black Studebaker Champion. Being 13 months old at the time, I remember absolutely nothing of the trip, though over the years my mother has assured me that I had a great time.

Undoubtedly, my great time came at her expense. Dad did the driving; mother wrestled with my tantrums, diapers, and anything else that came up. This, too, was before the advent of functional disposable diapers, so I suppose her chores were the toughest of the lot.

At any rate, we succeeded in reaching Nebraska so I could meet my grandparents and in plenty of time for the birth of my brother. Yes, indeed, mother must have had quite a trip, being eight months pregnantin those days, doctors were even farther apart than gas pumps. Campgrounds were wide spots on the road or gravel pits created by the building of the highway, and help in the event of an emergency was usually a long distance away.

Significantly, I cant recall either of my parents mentioning many problems from that trip, not so much as a flat tire. To the end of his days, Dad looked upon it as one of the greatest adventures hed ever had. Mother still grins when she spins a yarn about her 1950 trek from Alaska to Nebraska. Yet Im certain they must have had a few tense moments or minor breakdowns.

I find myself acting much the same way. Certainly Ive had my share of flat tires (seven in one trip), chipped windshields, and loose bolts, but I have to force myself to remember these things. Ive simply had too much fun driving back and forth on the Alaska Highway since 1972. When I think of the Alaska Highway, I think of friends from Whitehorse, Yukon, met by chance in the Squanga Lake Campground, or the largest lake trout Ive ever seen surfacing at the end of my sons line after a 40-minute battle. Sunsets, vivid beyond belief, come to mind, as do mountain sheep grazing at roadside. Those are the things that make driving the Alaska Highway such an adventure, an adventure available to anyone with a drivers license and access to a vehicle.