Traveling Through Alaska Trip 2026 Day 4, Day 5

Our highway guide-a must have!

To recap renting an RV through Alaska, you can get great service and pricing through Great Alaskan Holidays rentals. There are only 12 highways in Alaska, and when you rent an RV from this company, you can only drive on 5 recommended roads. They are: 1. The Glenn Highway- from Anchorage to Canada, 2. The Richardson Highway-from Tok to Fairbanks, 3. The Seward/Sterling Highway-from Anchorage to Soldotna- 4. the Parks Highway-from Palmer to Fairbanks- and 5. The Denali Highway, a mostly unpaved gravel highway which connects Paxon to Cantwell. The reason you can only drive these specific roads is because of road conditions. The four main interstates are in VERY good condition. Other roads are in terrible conditions--frost heaves, gravel, potholes, and you run the risk of damaging your rental RV with flying rocks and damaging your windshield. The Denali Highway is probably the most spectacular 135 mile scenic drive. It is one of the most scenic and remote drives in the world. It is also one of the worst highways to drive on, as it only has about 25 miles of it paved. We attempted it on one day but turned back very quickly as we could only go 25 mph or less and worried so much about damaging the RV we gave up on the rough gravel road. There was almost no cell service and we were worried about our tires going flat and getting help if we needed it. Nobody was on the road! Our goal this trip was to travel to a few different places we hadn't been before but this drive was not to be one of them!

The photo above is our travel "bible" for driving in Alaska--The Milepost. It has a mile marker by mile marker description of the roads-their conditions, the history of the area, places to watch for wildlife -"watch out for moose!" marked in red, and descriptions of reststops and pull outs. It's terrific! You can get it on Amazon and in bookstores. On to Day 4!

Day 4...We headed south out of Denali National Park. We saw a herd of caribou in a low lying field. It was 39 degrees last night! Then we saw a black bear along the roadside! We were driving too quickly to get any photos. We were headed to Talkeetna, a new town for us. It is often described as a quaint drinking town with a climbing problem. We took the Talkeetna Spur Road off the Parks Highway to get there. It's a cute, quirky little town-population of about 900. There is no official government there. If something needs fixing, the people rally together and get it done. The mayor for over 20 years was a cat named Mr. Stubbs. To be more serious, it IS the mountaineering staging area for Denali and a center for flightseeing glaciers and other trips. It has a vibrant arts scene, dirt roads, wooden boardwalks, and an old inn-The Fairview- with the oldest original bathtub in Alaska. There isn't much of a downtown at all, it's a conglomeration of small shops and a couple of small lodging places. There are a couple of really great restaurants there, and some famous spots to try like the spinach bread food truck. There are buildings with interesting placards that tell the location's previous history in front of each establishment.

There is no room for any RV parking downtown but there is a nearby visitor type center with a large empty gravel parking lot as you come into town where you could park a rig and then walk a short distance to town. You can take a short walk from there to see the braided river and mountains in the distance at the river front park. Braided rivers are a combination of silt runoff from the glaciers meandering through the river and giving it a braided look. 

Talkeetna Camper Park

tourist decals from all over on the sign

We stayed at a beautiful little RV campground called Talkeetna Camper Park, which had a terrific lodge style restaurant next door with great food, called "Latitude 62". It's a ten minute walk to downtown Talkeetna from the campground.

Talkeetna is also a place where you can take the Hurricane Turn Train and we did! The Alaskan Railroad has a dedicated track for this small train to ferry people and supplies to and from "the bush". The train stops for wildlife if tourists are on board. The train can be flagged to stop by people out in the remote areas by them just coming to the tracks and waving for the train to stop and pick them up. Drop offs and pick ups are informally requested. Supplies are regularly dropped off to the people living out in the boonies, backpackers get off and on at random stops, and random times. Everybody waved to us as we stopped and let people off and on....

If you are on the train to go to the Hurricane Gulch which is one of the tourist stops, the train will stop for wildlife sightings and even back up for a better look! We started in Talkeetna, the train station was right behind our campground! We did the round trip to Hurricane Gulch and back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. You have to bring your own food and snacks on board as it is a no frills train and the trip was about 6 hours. It travels about 25-30 mph, and there is a person who gives a little history about the area and how the train operates as you go along. We saw a baby moose running uphill. We stopped at an Alaskan author's home right beside the tracks to see her studio and peruse her books. We stopped to let another train go by to use the tracks and visited an old Alaskan Railroad set of train cars with the old historic snow plow.

We saw a mama moose way back in the woods, which the train stopped and backed up so everybody could see it. The engineer saw a mama black bear and baby, but we missed it. 

Hurricane Gulch

We stopped at the famous Hurricane Gulch Bridge, dead in the middle of the tracks overlooking the gorge, and took photos out the open baggage car window. The bridge is 296 feet above the gorge and is the longest, tallest steel bridge in North America. Stopping in the middle of the bridge with just skinny little cables between you and the drop below, and looking down was not for the faint of heart! Sparky felt a little dizzy. The price for this historical train trip was 125.00 a person. We had a great narrator host along for the trip and it was very educational and fun. This is not a well known tour so many people miss this opportunity to see more of the "real" Alaska.

We arrived back at our campsite around 7 and had dinner next door at the Latitude 62. Great food and highly recommended! We had a wonderful conversation with our waiter, Matt, who shared his personal story with coming to Alaska and trying to make it in the difficult climate and the challenges of building and establishing a home for his family.

Day 5... We traveled to Glennallen, AK, to the east, a distance of 219 miles. On our way, we saw a sled dog team pulling an ATV with people on it. That's one of the "sled dog tours" you can take in the summer in the area. On the way driving to Glenallen, we saw a young female moose in a parking lot, just moseying through the lot looking for grasses. You never know where you are going to see moose. They are often by the roadside! Less than a mile away, we saw ANOTHER moose at the side of the road! A little while later, TEN caribou quickly crossed the highway quite far in front of us, but it was still a thrill to see them.

Sparky and Eldo watched the moose for a little while and got one more iconic photo of the moose in front of the Mantanuska Glacier. Wow!

We wanted to stay at a roadhouse called Ranch House RV Park which we remembered from a past trip. It's a cool place, an original Alaskan roadhouse with an historic tavern, on mile marker 173, on the Glenallen Highway. They have added more campsites since the last time we visited a couple of years ago, and the sites are along the Tolsana River. They have full hookups (electric, water and sewer) and some pull thrus.The sites are gravel and level. It's a great stop between Valdez and Anchorage. The lodge/tavern has tremendous fireplace and rockers. Eldy was missing his rocker from home so there he is. 

Which is your favorite name?

The Ranch House has great chili and hot sauces galore as well to choose from! Sparky loves the names of the chilis and the sauces...but no hot sauce for her!

Here is our pull through site at Ranch House RV campground....wish we could have had the windows open at night to hear the rushing creek, but it got down to the low thirties and our water hose froze briefly! 

Ranch House site

Tomorrow we head towards Valdez, 125 miles to the south, and the remarkable Keystone canyon with multiple waterfalls before entering the harbor town of Valdez. See you then!