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We all love a good travel adventure story. Here’s one about a new EV driver making the twenty-five-hundred-mile trek from Portland, OR to Anchorage, AK. He saw a lot of cool sights while hunting down chargers and dodging forest fires. Think of it as a 21st century odyssey about resourcefulness and determination to overcome adversity (spoken in that deep movie trailer voice).
EV road tripping is becoming more common and easier. Many result in interesting social media posts. Here’s an interesting post on Reddit by drama_observer with a ton of responses about EV road tripping.
“Hello everyone. Recently a family member was interested in getting a new EV EV9 but the shipping up to Anchorage was problematic and/or expensive. There was some kind of accident or fire with a container ship which meant that shipping up there either wasn’t happening or was really pricey.
I needed a break from work and have wanted to do that drive for a while, so I agreed to drive it up from where they purchased it in Portland, to Anchorage, through Canada.
We looked at taking the ferry for part of the way – from Bellingham to Haines – but it was also pretty costly and they only sail once a week these days so the timing was a little awkward. I have done that leg in a car in the past (in an ICE car) and it’s a blast if you don’t mind sleeping on the deck of the ferry, but these days I am not sure my lower back would be too happy with that decision.
Summary
Six driving days, ranging from 5-10 hours drive time. Longest charge time was 4-5 hours, in a town where the fast charger was broken. Typically charged up above 80% given the unpredictability and distances involved in the more remote areas. Didn’t ever get stranded but it was a little dicey in spots. Overall much better charging support than I expected, especially in BC, where I feel like the infrastructure is to the point where you don’t really have to do much pre planning. No real regrets or big things I’d change.
Vehicle
I drove the 2026 Kia EV9 Long Range. I am not an EV guy so I don’t know too much about this. I know I had to use a CCS charger adapter at almost every stop.
I liked the car a lot. It’s pretty huge for a guy like me but for their family with kids I think it makes sense. It has quite a bit of range, realistically, it’s only in places like northwestern Canada that you feel it. I really liked the driving assist features – in my day to day I drive a pretty basic (but hey, still great) Subaru without a lot of the bells and whistles. The Kia Lane Following Assist (LFA) was awesome. Less functional on rougher roads of course but on highways, I could set cruise control and lane assist and pretty much uhhhhhhh let the EV9 drive (not sure if I am supposed to say that).
The one downside is the climate control cuts into the mileage pretty significantly. Took me a couple days to figure that out.
Route
I took I-5 north through Seattle, then Bellingham to cross the border. From there, I went through Kamloops, Cache Creek, Prince George, Fort Nelson (skipping Dawson), Watson Lake, Whitehorse, Beaver Creek, Tok, Glennallen, and ended in Anchorage. Stopped more places than that obviously but that will give you something to put into a map.
This was driven by a combination of places I wanted to see, charging places I knew about, avoiding forest fires, trying to stay within some kind of range of services in case of a problem of some sort, and drivable distances.
Lodging
I stayed in a hotel (of varied quality) every night. If I was to do this again and I had more flexibility, I think staying at RV parks and camping would be a good option because I think a good number of them are starting to or have chargers that charge reasonably overnight. Because I was only driving one-way though, I couldn’t bring all my camping stuff because I wasn’t going to be able to take it on the plane on the way back. I think you could definitely do this a little cheaper and a little more rustic.
For six nights, charging, food, snacks, coffee, etc., my cost as 1 person was about $1,700 USD. Again camping would make this a lot cheaper, and I like to try restaurants when I’m in new places, so you could certainly lower your food costs and be more frugal.
Planning an Electric Car Trip from Oregon to Alaska in an EV
I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP) which was pretty good. Further north I relied more on the official apps from the charging utilities – BC Hydro, and Flo in the Yukon. I also started relying on stopping in at every town’s visitor center and talking to the desk staff – they are quite often aware of developments in the EV charging area much earlier than some of the other resources. Things like, “Oh yeah, they just put in a new charger at Johnsons Crossing,” or “I think that RV park has a fast charger now actually.” that maybe weren’t on other resources yet.
One challenge here is that the Kia EV9 was not linked up with A Better Route Planner so ABRP couldn’t access my real-world driving efficiency data and adjust its predictions and routing advice. There were a couple times when I input the days travel into ABRP just to back-check it, and ABRP assumed I should have arrived in a town with 25% battery left and I showed up with 6%. For example. Normally not an issue but in the areas with big stretches between chargers… a little harrowing.
I also used the Milepost, which I got a physical copy of, and flipped through at charging stops to see if there were any points of interest coming up. I would recommend doing this as well. They have pretty good EV charging information in there too since they update it every year.
Day 1 – Portland to Kamloops BC
Started off early-ish from Portland, and stopped just north of Seattle to charge at a Tesla supercharger. It was on the map as being east of the highway, but all I saw over there were regular chargers, which do not work with the Kia despite the plug fitting. So I bopped across the highway and with a little maneuvering found a row of superchargers in a parking lot of like a totally nondescript office building. This was my first time ever fast charging so it was a learning curve. I had to download the Tesla app and make an account, which was annoying. First time also using a charging adaptor but once I got the hang of it, it went swimmingly. Charged for about 30 minutes I think to get back up to 80%. In the meantime I went into the lobby of the office building to find a bathroom – it was code locked but I just did the classic wait for someone to come out and pretend you were just about to go in move and it worked great.
Crossed the border near Abbotsford. Some questions regarding the newness of the vehicle but overall fine. One interesting note: the Kia EV9 does not switch its displays to kilometers automatically, but the display does change its speed limit guidance to a conversion from KM. A little funky but for example, in a 100km/h speed zone, the display still shows your speed in Miles per hour, but the little speed limit sign on the dash says Speed Limit 62MPH (the conversion from KM). I assume you can change this in the settings but I didn’t want to dick around with it and it worked well enough. Hung a right to head for Kamloops, and stopped pretty quick in Chilliwack to add some more juice – this was an “On the Go” charger in the parking lot of a gas station / convenience store. Worked reasonably well.
I headed for Kamloops because it was the biggest city near ish to my route and I figured had the best odds of having a decent hotel room available. I don’t know what’s going on in that town but boy they sure love hotels there – there are a gazillion. I pulled in late-ish and was able to get a room at the Doubletree – there were two EV charging spots out front where I could have charged overnight but since I got in late, they were both taken. Nice hotel, nice room, everything besides bars was closed for the evening though so I just went to bed.
Day 2 – Kamloops to Williams Lake to Prince George
Got up early-ish and found a charger in town to plug the car in at while I went and had breakfast. Then I moseyed back through town and looked around, passed through the farmers market, retrieved the car, and headed out to Williams Lake, the rough midpoint between Kamloops and Prince George, the goal for the evening.
Note – at this point I was hoping to push a little past Prince George, but there was no real logical next town that made sense. If you look at the total mileage to Anchorage, you’d like to divide it up into pretty even chunks but what I found was that the population centers with fast chargers are not really spread out like that. So Day 2 was a shorter day than I might have liked – if spacing was a little better, or I was camping, I definitely could have equalized the days a little better with that added flexibility.
Williams Lake was an interesting little town at the confluence of two rivers. Beautiful scenery in this part of BC that reminded me of eastern Oregon and Washington. Dry golden browns, bluffs, water. Unfortunately they put the chargers in the ass ends of some of the weirdest parking lots in BC so my half thought through plan of “Park to charge for a bit and walk around looking at the town” did not really work. Instead I got a disgusting drink at Tim Hortons and wandered around looking at some First Nations interpretive installations and eavesdropped on everyone in a Tesla charging at the same bank of superchargers. Could be worse!
Next stop was Prince George for the evening. I got a room at the Hyatt Place there, which again, had a couple of EV chargers in the lot that were available in theory but busy when I got there. Bad luck.
I had quite an evening here. Got to talking to another solo traveler at the bar, we had another drink or five and ended up playing blackjack at the local casino until last call. My new friend was a real pro and I think turned her $100 into $110. Fun night. Funny little town.
Day 3 – Prince George to Fort Nelson
Note here: I decided to go up 97 instead of the Cassiar for a couple reasons. One, there were some fires brewing on 37 that I didn’t like the looks of. Two, the chargers were more spread out on the Cassiar, and I was still a little gun shy about being so far from towns and services. 97 is more populated along this stretch although that’s not saying a ton. I believe the Cassiar is much more scenic, though.
This was to be a long-ass day, with two charging stops planned, and a nice little hangover to boot. Grabbed a plate of eggs at the hotel. Had to top off in the morning at a BC Hydro charger on the edge of town, in the community college parking lot. Got coffee at The Open Door Cafe on the way out of town, which was totally passable. Tons of local art and crafts for sale there which is cool.
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The first haul was Prince George to Chetwynd, a small little town that is famous for its chainsaw carving competition. Had lunch at A&W here while charging at the visitors center (BC Hydro). Beautiful scenery, you are kind of following a valley along this leg with lots of farms and forest and some great terrain change that offers some real sweeping views. Beautiful scenery through by Hudsons Hope though, including a big dam project and some killer views up and down a river valley. Hopped on the Alaska Highway (Finally!) and the next stop was a BC Hydro near Wonowon.
This stretch is scenic in a totally different way – it’s definitely starting to feel very northern. You can tell the soil is not deep – all the trees stop growing at a very specific height – and things feel muddy, boggy in a way. Thunderstorms. Not a ton of mountainous terrain yet. Most of what you see along the highway here are motels, abandoned motels, turnoffs for natural gas facilities, and work camps. There are a ton of giant pickup trucks around here full of sunburned men and welding gear. Got a room at the Woodlands Inn and Suites. No EV plugs at the hotel but a BC Hydro fast charger in town.
Day 4 – Fort Nelson to Watson Lake
Woke up early again eager to hit the road. This day was probably the highlight in terms of things seen. Charged the car up at the BC Hydro fast charger while chomping down some McDonalds breakfast and a “Long Espresso” which they gave me in the type of cute to go espresso cup that would cause a security incident if it was ever handed to an average American McDonalds customer at an average American McDonalds.
Next charge stop was Toad River Lodge, another one of dozens of funny gas station / motel combos that exist in this part of the world. Had some decent coffee. Wandered around. Moseyed. Took some pictures. BC Hydro fast charger again. The BC Hydro fast chargers are pretty plentiful, even this far north, and most of them advertise 150kwh which is nice and zippy.
This section is crossing into and within the Canadian Rockies, so the scenery starts to get pretty dramatic again. I did succumb to the temptation to stop and take pictures of vistas every 10 minutes. The joys of road tripping by yourself. You pass Muncho Lake for a stretch here, which has incredibly dramatic teal colored water.
Next stop was probably the highlight of the trip and another reason I took 97 instead of the Cassiar – Liard Hot Springs. A day use area with a cool bathing structure (changing rooms and benches) built into a natural hot spring. Stinky, but a real treat and a real unique area. Tons of folks were congregating here, including a few Quebecois dudes on motorcycles I had spotted at the A&W in Chetwynd.
Stop for the night was Watson Lake. I realized that basically every successive town heading north, pulling into the town I had been like “Wow, this place is really f’ing tiny” only to then drastically revise my expectations downwards when I got to the next, even incredibly tinier, town. Watson Lake is basically a wide spot with a few motels along the highway. And a visitors center, where the charger lived. I was in the Yukon territory by now – no more fast BC Hydro, I was stuck with 50kwh Flo chargers. Fortunately, the government of Yukon made all the chargers free to use. Unfortunately, they were pretty slow.
I left the car charging and walked across the highway to the Sign Post Forest – a grove of trees where almost 80 years’ worth of travelers have hung up signs and license plates, whatever, commemorating their journeys through. Unexpectedly very moving. I spent an hour just wandering around here, reading signs from people who had passed through decades ago and had more than likely passed on. Bring a sign of your own and definitely plan to stop here.
I got a room at A Nicer Motel in the strip of motels – as far as I could tell they all looked pretty similar. Again a nice functional room, nothing flashy. I think based on reading google reviews of places a lot of people had higher expectations for rooms, and I could envision a world in which I thought these rooms were crummy. But at the end of the day they were quiet and clean and the plumbing worked.
Had dinner at The Nugget, a Chinese place. Haven’t had Chinese food of that particular kind – your classic 90’s American Chinese food – since I was a kid growing up in Anchorage, so it was pretty nostalgic. Up in this area the similarities between Alaska and this part of Canada were really hitting me – weird little frontier places that basically only exist because of a big resource extraction boom 50-100 years ago and are somehow still hanging on.
Day 5 – Watson Lake to Whitehorse
Every night at the hotel I would do a little research and fine-tuning on the route ahead the next day, mostly so I could have the most current wildfire information. The night before is when I had noticed ABRP distance guidelines and route planning were way more optimistic than distances and charge levels I was hitting in the real world. I started to worry a little bit – there’s a leg on this trip when you hit Alaska where you really do not have any intermediate points and pretty much have to have a 100% charge to make it from Beaver Creek to the next charger. The distances I had been hitting and the car was telling me it was capable of, I was not going to make that leg, even at 100%. Light freakout moment, but I decided to dedicate Day 5 to some serious data checking. By which I mean I busted out a pen and pad, wrote down the actual distance between some stops, wrote down the ABRP prediction, wrote down my car’s start levels and the car’s prediction of miles remaining, and then did it all again at every stop and used good old fashioned arithmetic to see how much the car was off by.
Topped off again at the visitor’s center charger in the morning, then hit the road. The first stop was Rancheria Falls – no charger here but a quick 10-minute walk along some very nice boardwalks to see a cool series of waterfalls in the woods. I am a little bit spoiled living in Oregon but these were quite nice. The math here said the car was optimistic by about 25%. Not as bad as I thought, and a short distance, but still worrying. For the next leg I cut the Kia EV9’s climate controls completely to see if that would help.
Originally my thought was to try and make it to Johnsons Crossing in one leg without stopping to charge, because the distance was pretty comparable to the worrisome leg from Beaver Creek to Glennallen. But the charger in Johnson was super slow – i think it was a 25 – and as the day wore on and I checked my math with pen and paper at every stop I got less worried. I had figured out the AC was a massive impact on efficiency, and with the AC off, I was actually often beating the car’s estimates. So leaving from Beaver Creek with a 100% charge and no AC usage would actually give me a very comfortable buffer to get to the charger in Glennallen.
So I stopped at Teslin and used the fast (“fast”) charger at the marina there. Left the car charging, crossed the highway for a pretty passable clubhouse sandwich and fries at the restaurant there. Restaurant was quite busy!
Left on about an 80% charge for the leg to Whitehorse. Aimed for the Flo fast charger at the Whitehorse Transportation Museum. There were plenty of like, 7kwh chargers that were still paid for by the Yukon government. So I hooked up to one and planned to spend the night in Whitehorse.
This town broke the every-town-is-tinier trend. Wow, it really reminded me of Anchorage. Architecturally and vibes wise. They have a beautiful river front path, it seems to be a jumping-off point for outdoor activities like hunting, mountain biking, etc in the area, so it was full of like, young adventure type people. Bend Oregon vibes. I got a room at the Sternwheeler, after calling around to about five other places that were already full. Then I went and put my name in at Gather, had a drink and some decent tempura green beans at the hotel across the street while I was waiting, then had some kind of delicious ahi/guacamole situation with a margarita at Gather, and a couple more drinks at the Woodcutter’s Blanket up the road.
Talked to some interesting folks at the bar, including an older couple from Alberta on their first road trip in 40 years, and a young man who had just gotten laid off from his job in fuel cells. Always sit at the bar and talk to people IMO. Car was just reaching 90% ish at this point, five hours later. Back to the hotel and conked out.
Day 6 – Whitehorse to Beaver Creek
Another short-ish day because of the timing of charging, so I planned to take it easy and give myself plenty of stopping time. Good thing too because this is probably the most or second most scenic leg of the drive. Got breakfast at The Open Door, a fascinatingly busy coffee shop where they’ve got a real streamlined operation happening. Whitehorse is a very interesting place, I would love to go back and spend more time there and figure out the vibes. It’s definitely a major regional hub of some kind.
Short, mountainous, beautiful leg to Haines Junction. Pulled up to the fast charger at the visitors center and for the first time in the trip, had to wait in line for someone else to finish charging.
Very cool visitors center here. Tons of info on geology of the area, the mountains, icefields, First Nations people, the whole deal. Overheard a First Nations fella from the eastern side of Canada talking to one of the local First Nations guys about the differences in how their treaties were set up, how they handled certain things, so on and so forth. Cool moment to eavesdrop in on for a white boy like me. After charging up to 80%, I went and grabbed a coffee and snack at the coffee shop / bakery in town.
Continued on. This segment is definitely the most bonkers scenery of the whole drive. Take your time here if possible. The road got pretty bad around Destruction Bay, which I was expecting since I talked to a bunch of the visitor center people along the way. It’s built on permafrost so in the spring it heaves like crazy, not much they can really do about that. Definitely need to be prepared to slow down, there are some wild dips. Pulled into Beaver Creek around 5pm maybe, hit the charger at the visitors center. Another slow one so no chance of scooting out early since I pretty much needed to be at 100% to feel good about continuing to Glennallen without problems. Asked the visitors center attendant about motels, got told there were only three so I was in luck in that it would be easy to choose. One was full, one was dis-recommended by the lady I talked to, so I got a little cabin out back of Buckshot Betty’s. Decent enough little spot but god I wish they had put a fan in the room. it was really stuffy. Had an OK burger at the restaurant, some good fries, sat next to a shockingly vulgar Canadian fella who seemed to take offense to the fact that I scooted down the bar to give him and his buddy a little more elbow room. Whatever.
Returned to the visitor’s center on foot to sit in the car for another hour while it chugged up to 100% ever so slowly. By the time I got back to the cabin it was cooling off a bit but still quite toasty in there. Took a cold shower to cool down and passed out surprisingly easily.
Day 7 – Beaver Creek to Anchorage
Woke up early, got coffee at a place across the street, it was fine, hit the road. Roads still quite bad and lumpy in this area. No real cell service once you leave town for quite a ways. Border crossing was very quick and easy, and I laughed at how much better the road instantly got. Some construction in the area (hence the good roads I guess) and had to wait for pilot cars a couple of times, but overall pretty quick through here. Quite beautiful again, this whole day was.
Got to Tok midmorning, stopped for coffee and a snack. I had been keeping my eye on a big fire in the area that looked like it was threatening the town and possibly to close the cut down to Glennallen, which would have detoured me up around through Delta Junction and then down the Richardson. Not a ton longer but not time I wanted to spend. 7 days on the road is a long time. Fortunately, there had been a giant downpour in the area the day before and the fire was totally out.
Continued on to Glennallen, pulling in around 11:30. No state or federal funding in this great nation of ours for charging infrastructure – this one was hilariously tucked in the back parking lot of a log cabin Subway, right next to a dumpster. Sure says something about something. Brief moment of panic when the CCS charger wouldn’t start charging, but downloaded yet another f’ing charging network app and eventually got it to start charging. 50kw again. Not really “Fast” but at this point I only had 180 miles to go to Anchorage. Rather than eat at Subway I hiked up the road a bit to the Caribou motel where there was a cafe. Had a pretty great grilled cheese sandwich and a pretty decent bowl of tomato soup and a pretty weird salad. Hit the road with about 85%.
No more charging stops til Anchorage. The section of highway between Glennallen and Palmer is again some of the most beautiful on the whole trip, despite the rainy weather.
Arrived in Anchorage on about 17%. Good enough!
That’s it! Hope this helps someone in the future. It sounds like Canada is really rolling out some more EV capabilities as we speak, so the section of the drive in the Yukon should be getting less stressful every day.”
Please Drop Your Thoughts in the Comments Below
Have you taken your EV on a road trip? If so, please tell us about it.
If you have taken your EV on a road trip, what were the biggest challenges and do you recommend anything for other EV owners to prepare?
Chris Johnston is the author of SAE’s comprehensive book on electric vehicles, “The Arrival of The Electric Car.” His coverage on Torque News focuses on electric vehicles. Chris has decades of product management experience in telematics, mobile computing, and wireless communications. Chris has a B.S. in electrical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA. He lives in Seattle. When not working, Chris enjoys restoring classic wooden boats, open water swimming, cycling and flying (as a private pilot). You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn and follow his work on X at ChrisJohnstonEV.
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