Great Northern Circle Route via Stewart - CanaDream

Fifteen nights and 4,500 kilometres in a loop from Edmonton in a motorhome, up the Alaska Highway to the Yukon border and back down through northern British Columbia.

Jasper comes first in the Rockies, then Prince George, and Chetwynd, Hudson’s Hope and Tumbler Ridge in the Peace country, where the dinosaur trackways in the rock are among the better ones in Canada and the waterfalls are easy to reach from the road.

Dawson Creek follows at Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway, then Fort St John and Fort Nelson, and the Liard River Hot Springs, where a boardwalk crosses a warm swamp to two pools in the forest and the bison on the road nearby are a genuine hazard. Watson Lake comes next on the Yukon border, with its signpost forest, then Dease Lake and Meziadin Junction, and Stewart on the Alaska border, where the Salmon Glacier above the town is the largest in the world reachable by road.

The motorhome and the day-by-day plan come from CanaDream, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with insurance options priced at booking. Sixteen days for 4,500 kilometres is a committed schedule with long driving days, and Mount Robson at the end, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, is worth the stop rather than the drive past. The season is short, roughly June to early September. The Salmon Glacier road above Stewart is gravel and steep, which is worth checking against the hire terms. Wood bison, bears and caribou all use the Alaska Highway, which makes dawn and dusk the hours to avoid driving.