In November of 2025, I won a trip to McCarthy, Alaska in a charity auction. McCarthy, and the neighbouring town of Kennecott, were founded in the early 1910s to support a copper mine (more on that in the next few posts!). The area is about a 13 hour drive from home. In order to maximize our time in the town itself, we split the drive out over two days. The first was a bit of a slog, from our home in Whitehorse to the town of Copper Censer.
We’ve driven out west along the Alaska Highway before and were heading to Beaver Creek in a couple weeks, and so we did not stop often. Instead of music, we switched to the audio book of Dungeon Crawler Carl which I HIGHLY recommend. We stopped in Haines Junction for a coffee and a sweet treat, and gassed up in Destruction Bay.
Travellers often say that the road is in rough shape past Destruction Bay. I’ve never found that to be the case. The road is quite good up until Burwash Landing, then gets worse as you get closer to the border. That being said, if you drive cautiously, you’ll have no problems. Just please – pull over if you’re holding others back!
The physical border was our third stop of the day. We, of course, took our photo at the Alaska sign.
The Canada-USA border is not militarized, but there’s a clear cut line along the entire thing. It is quite noticeable here at the monument.
Our time at US Customs was short. They simply asked where we were going and told us we weren’t staying for long enough to get to enjoy it. Border guards at these crossings seem to be pretty laid back when it comes to Canadian tourists. They seem to realize that we’re part of the hand which feeds the Alaskan communities. That being said, I suspect that our complexion assists with that sometimes.
After crossing the border, the first many miles were rough. Alaska recently rebuilt this stretch, but apparently the designers or contractors forgot they are building on permafrost. As an engineer whose career mostly revolves around Civil and mining infrastructure on permafrost, I shuddered at the waste of money. We took a well-needed stop at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. The views from the deck are stunning. This is worth a stop!
We made a stop in Tok, but took no pictures there. We stretched our legs at a nice pullout along the Tok Cutoff, then continued on to gas up in Glennallen.
After a little more driving, we arrived at our accommodations in Copper Center. Kayla went for a run, and I went for a walk along the Klutina River to stretch my legs. It was salmon season, so the river had lots of people fishing!
We went to bed pretty early, wanting to get on the road early the next day.
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