The drive along the Alaska highway (Alcan) is not for the faint of heart, but if you are considering doing the drive with your family, we have some recommendations for you! As part of our military move from Kansas to Anchorage, we decided to give ourselves as long as needed to make the drive fun to get to our new destination. We have never been big road trippers before this drive, so we really wanted to make it as enjoyable as possible.

After looking through many Facebook groups, getting the famous Alaska Travel Planner Milepost Book, deciding our budget, and ways to use credit card points for free travel, we finally narrowed down our route for our Alaska highway road-trip itinerary, and are happy to share it with you today.

This itinerary has notes on credit card usage for points, hotel stay costs, drive time, and exciting stops along the way. If you’re looking for the full planning spreadsheet, what we actually ended up doing, hotel reviews and credit card tips, here is our full Alaska Highway Road-Trip Itinerary.

I honestly thought by the end of it we’d be ripping our hair out to get out of the car, but, we were actually sad to have it end. Almost every destination exceeded our expectations. The drive kept getting more and more beautiful. It was stress-free. We were having so much fun.  

We were so blessed with great weather, clear roads, and no derailments like so others have experienced in some of the brutal parts of the drive!

A few weeks before our trip:
-There were massive fires along parts of the highway in Canada which would have made us re-route our entire trip.
-Then a week after our trip there was flooding in Toad River, fires in Jasper
-An explosion at Yellowstone… craziness.

We were really very lucky with our timing. It’s busy season in the National Parks in the summer, but for a good reason. The parks are beautiful! We had a perfect combination of excitement, positive adventures and good weather made our trip one we won’t forget! If you’re looking to drive through the northern US states, Canada or all the way to Alaska, our Alaska highway road-trip itinerary will be helpful for you!

Based on questions from you, I plan to share some tips on how I planned our trip. We saved thousands of dollars (probably around $4,000) by using credit card points for travel. I used FB groups, Google and chatGBT to help with planning certain aspects of our trip. More on all that to come later!  

In the meantime, here are some recaps of hotels, adventures and destinations: 

Best Hotel:
Kids: Caribou Cabins, Tok, Alaska or Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton, Canada
Parents: SpringHill Suites Island Park Yellowstone, Idahoor Moxy Marriott, Banff 

Favorite Activity:
Kids: Watiki Waterpark in Rapid City, SD
Or hiking in the Badlands
Parents: Boat ride and hiking Two Medicine, Glacier, MT, Moraine Lake 

Favorite Car Activity:
Kids: Looking for wildlife, coloring, or playing Nintendo Switch
Parents: Watching the scenery 

Favorite Place:
Kids: Waterton or Yellowstone
Ashley: Banff (Moraine Lake)
Pat: Glacier 

Worst Hotel:
Kids: None
Parents: Quality Inn, Whitehorse, Canada 

Most Unexpected: 
Badlands beauty and how fun it was hiking
Old Faithful’s majestic-ness
How gorgeous the entire drive way 

Most stressful part:
Kids: Getting annoyed with each other sometimes
Parents: When Ashley was sick for 2 days and worried whatever stomach bug she had wouldn’t spread throughout the family
Finding chargers every day and reminding kids to charge electronics  

If I could go back to any stop, I’d go back to:
Cali: Hot springs in Liard
Teagan: Watiki Waterpark or Waterton
Bella: Waterton or Badlands
Ashley: Banff
Pat: Badlands

Thanks for following along on our adventures! More to come!