The Ultimate NW Adventure...

[Power Wagon]

Doing this is almost an impossibility, due to the cost, logistics, and enormous time required. But, it would be one of the most awesome trips of your life. What would that be? Well, to drive the Alaska Highway, more accurately, to make the trip to Alaska, and explore at least some of the vast outback of our biggest and most remote state. There's two major routes to get there, and the places to go within Alaska are very numerous, but for the most part, not mapped. Of course, driving the Dalton Highway ( Haul Road ) to Deadhorse is a must, and the scenery along the way ranges from the almost deadly boring to breathtaking.

There's a vast network of jeep trails, abandoned roads, which go to mines, old homesteads and otherwise, in the non-tundra areas of Alaska, not to mention almost endless variety of wildlife photography and encounters, not to mention the scenery. Also, both NWT and the Yukon have a number of amazing remote places to visit as well, as well as equally impressive scenery and wildlife, not to mention, history.

Read through a copy of Milepost magazine, and you can't help but feel an irrestistable call to see what has only been seen by a microscopic portion of our species.

I'm not going to pretend I can do it, nor organize it, as I have no chance to afford it, but this is one of the most dreamed of things in my entire life. I have studied this site to the point of voyeurism, all it does is make me want to more. Steve & C. J.'s RV Trip to the Arctic These people did this, partially, in 2009.

Has anyone had the chance to make this trip, part of it, or gotten to explore the non-highway parts of Alaska? Even something as far out as an ice-road drive to Barrow, or something equally as "out there"?

[esh]

For something fairly extreme, search for Alaska Cruiser Trek. It is a pretty hardcore boggy adventure with many river crossings and slogs up into glacial river valleys. Minimum 35" tires, spring over suspension (to prevent rivers from pushing you around too much), very good water sealing for all of your truck systems, dual lockers, aggressive tires, 2 week supplies, and 5mpg type 4x4 low fuel capacity for a few hundred miles.

Here is a site of one of the photographers that goes along (and drives her own FJ40 land cruiser). XPLORN.com (also look at her other Xplorn galleries)

You should be able to find writeups from Mark Whatley on the trip and pre-runs, as well as writeups on ih8mud.com site and forums.

River Shiver up in Canada is also a fun event. There are many writeups of just road trip style adventures on expedition portal forums.

[Power Wagon]

I'm a bit surprised to see how little comment on the idea. While there's a very large and long "road trip", the "not highway" portions are indeed some of the most remote, desolate and distant there are in North America. Especially some parts of Alaska and Yukon and NWT, there's many side excursions, like the CANOL road (follows a WWII era small pipeline) which have fantastic scenery, and are not "safe" as there's not more than a few travellers a year into the wilderness areas. The idea for doing this as a group, is that the risks are vastly decreased by having several vehicles, as breakdowns in some of these would doom you, as you could get yourself over 100 miles from a road that has more than a handful of travellers a year. Wildlife that's unfamiliar with people. Perhaps that's not what people want to see. But the idea is one of the things I want to do more than almost anything I can think of.

[hutchman]

You are not alone in this dream........I had a trip mapped out on an 1150 GS BMW that included the ALCAN, Top of the World Highway, The Dalton Road, the loop around the southern part of the state and come back on the Cassiar. Sadly, I ended up getting sick and really am no longer able to make this trip by myself. However, when my wife retires, it is on my list of things to do! There is just something about Alaska that draws me........

[Power Wagon]

You are not alone in this dream........I had a trip mapped out on an 1150 GS BMW that included the ALCAN, Top of the World Highway, The Dalton Road, the loop around the southern part of the state and come back on the Cassiar. Sadly, I ended up getting sick and really am no longer able to make this trip by myself. However, when my wife retires, it is on my list of things to do! There is just something about Alaska that draws me........

It's because we've got that "just want to be ourselves" DNA in us. I don't need to be entertained by tv or live in an artificial urban jungle. I'm happiest when I have space and nobody to crowd me, but I'm happy to be where others are who think the same. Could this be something to plan on doing in a few years? I think I might have a friend or two who just might want to make the same venture.

Also, I want to tour eastern Oregon, all the places I've never been. Drive the Mojave Road, see Death Valley, go all over southern Utah (I used to live down there, didn't get to explore much), and the mountains of Colorado. I'd like to drive the Oregon Trail from Independence all the way west. I'd like to visit all 48 states and see the best parts. Tour all the ghost towns of Oregon and whole rest of the PNW, including Nevada and Colorado and Montana (used to live in MT, too ). What I saw about people going places is why I registered on this site, and why I read a lot of the venture reports, and still do.