We Drove One of Alaska's MOST Remote and Brutal Roads in an RV

Tonight is our last official night in Alaska. Pretty soon we're going to be making a left turn and it's the official start of the Top of the World Highway. So if you're leaving Alaska, as you're leaving Tok, about 10 miles outside of Tok, you would make a left at Telton Junction and then start heading towards Chicken, you start heading towards Dawson City, Yukon Territory. We're going to cross the border at the Top of the World Highway. I'm really excited to see what this road is like compared to, you know, that part of the Alcan Highway we don't like to discuss. Okay, when does the road turn to gravel? Is it chip seal? Is it not chip seal? Are they also going to have this tore up and we're just going to be driving on gravel forever? Tonight is also the first night we're going to try out our generator. I'm gonna call her Jenny. How original. We sure hit it at the right time. It is September 1st and the border crossing actually closes up here on the Top of the World Highway September 4th. Really? I just learned about that and I'm so glad somebody mentioned it. I had no idea. Do you think we'll be their last customers? We might be. Like, it makes you wonder, do they just eventually like, all right, we're done. That's the last one to cross. Shut her down. See you next season. Well, it makes sense because we were looking at the weather yesterday for Dawson City and it's gonna have some lows in the 20s over the next couple days. When you're up here and the weather changes, the weather changes. What's cool is we kind of get to chase like fall weather all the way down. I just hope we don't hit any snow. Jenny's tagging along. She's strapped in the back. We filled her up with some gasoline yesterday and we also have a gas can just to have a little extra fuel. We're not sure what type of dry campers we are. Are we the people that are gonna blow through like gallons of gasoline while dry camping? You guys remember when we did some boondocking in Denali State Park and we were very nervous about running a lot of things because our batteries seemed to be draining faster than we imagined but we still made it through the weekend. But now we can really test the batteries. We can really drain those down because we have a way to charge them back up. Well, no turning back now. We're in it to win it. I guess the biggest question I want answered is what is going to be the difference between this road and Destruction Bay. There's so many questions we had before coming up to Alaska to know which route to take. We hope to clarify some of those answers for you as we go along. Mileage, fuel stations, actual places to stay, maybe boondocking opportunities. Need not worry, we're gonna have a lot to cover going forth. You know how we roll in the Hanks family. We bring all the goodies to you. We had a heck of a time this entire trip trying to keep up with cleaning the truck. To be honest, we actually haven't really been cleaning the truck at all. We've only been washing the windows and let me tell you, staying on top of that is tough enough. Wow, we are climbing though. Feels like we're climbing to the top of the world. I know why they call it this now. If you're wondering why I'm always driving, I'd rather drive than have to do camera stuff. Carl's way better at holding the camera and getting all the shots you need so I'll just, I'll be right here if you need me. Okay, I already screwed up. Nae took it upon herself this morning to load the maps and get everything set up perfectly. What do I do? I accidentally exited the maps on my phone. Now we have no signal and no way of knowing where we're going. Hopefully this town of Chicken has some cell service. If not, the Hanks are just going to get lost in this top of the world highway. Come find us. Now get this, this town of Chicken only has three businesses and the coolest part is they have a life-size statue of a chicken there in town and it's made up of recycled high school lockers. Talk about thinking outside the box. Was that a dad joke? It was kind of like skim the surface there. We'll go with it. Initial thoughts so far on this road, hey it's another road. Nothing we haven't handled thus far in our travels. The major concern however is going to be when we cross over into Canada and we travel from Dawson City down to Whitehorse. That's where the roads have a potential, a great potential to get sketchy. Maybe I spoke too soon. Not so many heave hoes quite yet but more just jolting and jittering so hopefully no leaky pipes in the RV or knocked over bookshelves when we get back there to check it out hopefully. These views are amazing though like it, what was that? Kind of reminds me of when we drove the Cassier Highway. You feel like you're up top here like I feel like we have the bird's eye view of Alaska up here. Yeah it's an interesting concept to think we're going south eventually but before we do we gotta head north and east as well. The top of the world kind of takes us in a different direction than what we were originally heading before. That's okay though because we're excited to see some new things. That's what it's all about and I'm glad we're doing this. Ask me how I feel about that in a couple days though. Just remind me. I think we're gonna need a new rig after this Alaska trip. This is some of the roughest roads we have experienced since being in Alaska. It is what it is. The Hakes know how to do it best. Take it slow because everyone else is like just speeding around us. I am going 25 miles per hour and it seems like that's a good speed to not have too much jolting of the uh you know like if you go too slow on gravel it kind of becomes bouncy. We're finally hitting some loose gravel and we're about 50-ish miles from that junction in Tok. If Alaska's like this I don't know what Canada's gonna be like. Finally out of it. Let's see what the rest of this road holds for us. Well the roads unfortunately showed no signs of improvement. You see we weren't exactly expecting a dramatic difference on this particular route but we had held on to some hope for at least a reduction in dust and gravel. Throughout the summer journey to Alaska our truck and trailer have endured quite the beating. Oh the joy we are going to feel when we finally are able to encounter normal roads once again. You see out here in this desolate part of the country you can't help but feel utterly alone. So when you stumble upon towns consisting of nothing more than three shopping buildings it's hard not to be elated. And let me tell you the chicken statue it's absolute must-see attraction. After all how often do you find yourself next to a 10-foot sculpture of a chicken constructed entirely from old lockers. Well a quick stop turned into an awesome like hour plus hangout. We met some of our peeps here. We got Grand Design Solitude. So I know we didn't make it to the national rally but we're kind of having our own little grand design rally here in Chicken, Alaska. So sweet. They bought us some cherry pie from the cafe. Delicious. So make sure you stop here and get yourself a slice of pie. All right I met some friends. We got some pie. I love it. Can we all cheers for pie? Chicken. It's like you want to stay here longer but it's time to make our way to hopefully somewhere to boondock tonight. I've been meaning to share with you guys that I downloaded the app iOverlander. I downloaded that so we can find some really cool boondocking spots because the other apps we have will show some boondocking but this app is like meant for wild boondocking. I'm gonna use that app. We're gonna find a place to boondock tonight. We're gonna get the generator out and we're gonna see how that puppy roars. You ready to go Carl? Ready. Let's rock and roll. Let's get that generator ripping. It's important to note here that there is absolutely no cell service. Yeah. I said that right. Zero cell service. So if you plan on visiting Chicken or exploring more of Alaska here's a valuable tip. Get yourself a copy of the milepost book. It's known as the bible of Alaska travel and here's why. It's filled with information like fuel resources, foods, towns and even wildlife suggestions. It has been by far our ultimate guide for exploring the wonders of Alaska and our complete travels throughout. Sitting here I can't really put my finger on it. Maybe it's the vibrant fog colors or the inexplicable thrill of just exploring uncharted territory. But the top of the world highway seems to offer something truly magical. There's streams and rivers that go on for miles complemented by cascading views with vistas of orange, yellow and red trees. Yes we eventually encountered that stretch of the road we were dreading which is made of entirely gravel but it served as a gentle reminder to just slow down and absorb the beauty around us. Inevitably even so the time spent on the road eventually left us mentally fatigued. I don't know about you guys but who would have guessed that driving at a mere 10 to 20 miles an hour on dirt roads demands such concentration. Needless to say we eagerly anticipated arriving at our boondocking site tonight longing for a well-deserved rest and an opportunity to finally witness the performance of the new generator. What a day. We made it. We're set up. We're ready for some real boondocking where we're not at a campsite and it cost us zero dollars. We just had a long talk about how this is going to be a long weekend and we don't know what we got ourselves into because we just spent the past few hours driving maybe like 20 or 30 miles and it took us several hours because we had to go so slow. Guys I don't know how the rest of this drive's gonna go. I have a feeling it's gonna get worse from Dawson Creek all the way to Whitehorse but I just I don't I don't know. Either way let's focus on the now. We had this beautiful boondocking spot. I just wish it was clear because we really would love to see the northern lights but you gotta be grateful for what you have. We got here safely. Nothing's broken. I mean the bookshelf in the back was definitely tipped over because of all the crazy driving and I'm just gonna leave it laying down because there's no reason to pick it back up for this whole drive. This is a really nice boondocking spot and if you're looking for details on where this is you might want to download the Overlander, iOverlander app and I'll put it in the description below of which location this is. We got the inverter hooked up so we're able to run the Starlink and the Starlink's giving us pretty good speeds right now. I think we got 18 down and 12 up. Thanks Mr. Starlink. With the Starlink, with our inverter, we can relax and watch TV tonight. We're hungry, we're tired, probably gonna go to bed early so we'll catch you guys in the morning and give you some some more updates on how this site went. Good night!