Road Trip To The Arctic Ocean

This is the Alaska Highway. We are attempting to drive this old car thousands of miles to the top of the world through some of the most incredible landscapes on the continent. This is episode two of our Alaska series. You're watching Lil and Jay. Hello! We are on the Alaska Highway currently which is so insane for us. We have been driving it for what feels like a long time. Thousands of kilometers. I think we've actually done about 1500 kilometers since we started. Yeah. Crazy case. But we're standing on the side of a river right now and it's got frozen like baby icicles. What do you call them? Yeah, the icebergs. Frozen baby icebergs floating down the river which is so so sick because we've never seen that before. No, what a strange phenomenon. Just the ice floating down the river. It's not that strange. Oh no, it is for us. Yeah, it is for me. Have you ever seen this happen before? No, but it's common. Okay. Anyway, we have got a lot of case to get done today. We're going to head into the Yukon which is absolutely crazy because it means that the whole time we've been traveling so far has just been BC. Yeah. And now we get to make it into a new province. So I'm hella excited about that. Yeah, Yukon. And then in this video I reckon we're going to be in Alaska which is so crazy. It means we cross into the U.S. border. Yeah. Or we cross through the U.S. border into Alaska which is going to be really exciting for the Troopy and fingers crossed everybody at home cross your fingers because we need it to be a smooth crossing. Yes. Because I don't want to have to deal with any unknown paperwork that we missed or something like that. This is our first time we have crossed a country border with the car. Being from Australia we've never had to like drive across a border before. It's always been flying so it's a bit of an unknown thing for us especially with the car being registered in Australia but we're here to find out aren't we? Yeah. That's why we're here. But anyway, we've got a lot of case to get done. Let's hope that we see some more wildlife. I'm hoping for a brown bear. I'm hoping for a brown bear. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I do want to see a brown bear from the car though. Yeah. All right, let's go. Alrighty guys, we are back with another episode of driving to the top of the world. We're going to be doing a huge amount of kilometers or miles depending on where you're from. So strap in, subscribe and have a great time. We are just pulling up to this like pull this roadside pull off and it says it's the 60th parallel so that's like a uh what do you think? Well in Tasmania we are 42 degrees south. Yep. And this is 60 degrees north so we're way further from the equator than we were at home in Tasmania. Yeah, that's crazy. Look at this. So this is our little um I don't know why that's flashing but you can see that that gives us like our position all the time and it's like that's the most amount of zeros I've ever seen realistically. Yeah. So that's really cool. I thought it's really cool. I thought it is cool. It's really cool. 60th parallel. We've made it. We're very far north. We're very far north. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's keep rolling. Okay guys, this is going to be the wildest thing you've ever seen in your whole lives. We were just driving and I saw that this said town of Watson Lake, Lucky Lake Recreational Waterslide Park. Day use area. And then I looked out the window and they're not joking. There is a ginormous water slide here. However, I think you'd end up in a little bit of strife if you went down it today. More than for the reason that you'd be very, very cold. But secondly, I think you would end up with a very sore arm and I'll show you why. That's crazy. Look at that. You just shoot out the bottom and you end up in the lake that at the moment is a really, really frozen lake. That's so wild though. How warm do you reckon that gets in summer though? Do you reckon that even gets warm enough for it to be worthwhile having a huge slide here? I don't know if it would be. How warm do you reckon the lake would get in summer? I don't know. It's strange. Because right now it's like zero. Yeah, it is. But the weather's just different here, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I don't know. Look at that slide babe. It's a crazy slide. Like it goes and goes. It would be so much fun. It would be so much fun. We'll have to stop here on the way back. You have to wear a wetsuit. Next up on the world tour is Watson Lake, famous for this place called the Signpost Forest. Legend has it that it was started by homesick soldiers in World War II who were stationed up here. They to help with a bit of homesickness, but now it has become an absolutely iconic place to hang your number plate up on the way through. Guys, no way. Look at this. That's a Victorian one. How cool. I just love our number plates too much to take one off. I know, we couldn't bear to get rid of one. Still, that's crazy. Oh, Western Australia. Oh, there's a Tasmanian one. No way. Wow. No way. That is cool. You know what? I thought to myself we would have to be the only Tasmanian car to have driven up here, played it. Apparently not. Unless they brought it from somewhere else, but yeah, that is wild. What's this? You spotted something else? They've made it. No, 2022. 8th of the 8th, 2022. Good on them. Good on them. Time to plow on up the road. We're heading almost directly west at the moment, snaking in and out of the BC-Yukon border, and it's a perfect time to get fuel as the Yukon province has no sales tax, so we'll save ourselves a couple of bucks. Fuel prices in Teslan, that's $2.16 there, and there's also drinking water here as well. We'll just check the other servo first. $2.16 is not bad though for the middle, absolutely no. Just pulled up to this one, $2.36, so I think I'll take $2.16. $2.16 just down the road. Literally like not even 100 meters from each other. Wise is so good, I can so quickly move money from Australian to Canadian dollars, and I can do it instantly. That's going to cost me hardly anything in fees. Look at that, that's how good the exchange rate is at the moment. $0.98 Canadian per Australian dollar, and look, done. Moved. Moved. Now we can fill up. Now we can fill up, and it's that easy. With Canadian dollars. Canadian dollars. At $2.16. Oh my gosh you guys, we've just driven 20 minutes. Obviously we've traveled Australia a lot, and the roads are really really long, however I can't even tell you that didn't prepare us for this. This has been like hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers of no stops, not even any wildlife today. Like Lil said, this is definitely the longest drive we've ever attempted, but at least it's been easy for us to find campsites, and that's what we're on track to do now, but we've made the mistake of following Google Maps. This is the way Google Maps has taken us. Well I mean if Google says, then if he says, then we do. He does. It's going to make up here, aren't we? Here we are. We're in the sand. How strange. We seem to be a bit stuck at the moment. I bet you this isn't the way. Should I drive through here, or should we go forward on onwards? Yeah we'll be right. This is my test. We're mud bogging. Thank goodness for the lockers, because we got out, no dramas, went full drive low, and we were sweet, but we did take a wrong turn, which is fairly evident at this point. We're going to the desert. I didn't think we would be saying in Alaska that we were going to the desert, but this is what they call the desert in Alaska. It's sand and sand dunes. So we're heading there, and we're going to go and try and find a free camp on the water in the sand, which is going to be like so sick. Yeah so weird, isn't it? That's like, that's our thing that we do at home. Camp in the sand. Yeah. So hopefully we figured out how to get in there now. Yeah we can try onX actually. So as you can see, we've been using our wise cards flat out on this trip. It makes it so easy when you're converting between currencies, and because we've been going between Canada and the US, it has made going from Canadian dollars to US dollars. From our Australian bank accounts, really really simple. And my card is on my phone, and I can just tap wherever I want. It is as simple as that, but what you can do is click the link in our description, or you can scan the QR code on the screen to get yourself a free physical card sent to your home, and you can start paying with Wise on your next travel adventure as easy as that. Thanks to Wise for sponsoring this video, and let's get back into it. All right, so with a little help from onX Offroad, we found the right path in. Well, we hoped. It's always fun to use the Troopy on trails like this. It's what we built it for. Although we've been doing mostly highway caves recently, this is where it's most at home, searching for hard to find campsites. This is not what I expected to be doing today, but there's a campground that someone has just put down on iOverlander. The directions on Google obviously aren't going to take us there. However, he's just written the directions that said, take the road across from car cross sand dunes, go straight until you get to the power poles, and then just go straight to the power poles, through the power poles, to the lake. And that's what we're doing, and we're hoping it takes us to a really sick lake at the end. But this is crazy. This is like Tasmania, except for the mountains. We're driving in the sand and the snow at the same time. But, well, like, you know, it's a mixture of sand and snow. It's crazy. That's so crazy. We're going to cross the tram lines here. The train tracks. We're off-road. Not what I expected to be doing. But this is really cool. So we've just tried to navigate ourselves to the big lake, because it looks mint, but we couldn't get over the top hill because the bottom of it was washed out to get to the lake. And now we've just tried an alternative way. And it looks like the same kind of situation here. Like that's just all washed out and who knows what's under there. So I think we might just end up making a decision to go back. And there was this cute little campsite in the bush. I really want the view, but you just got to do at 6.30 at night. Or we could camp up on top of the sand dune up there. Which would be insane, but would be more windy because it's windy tonight. It's so sick here, you guys. Oh no, I think I was going the wrong way. When we were up on top of that sand dune, I didn't really look. There's a tree there. Could we have come down that way? Yeah, it just meant you had to go up But we made it up to the top. Yeah, you can definitely go that way. And we can camp here. All right, where do you want me to go over there and have a look? Well, the actual campsite is like 20 meters down the hill. So then we just came up to have a look to see if there would be anywhere else. But I just think maybe this is a bit exposed and it might be nicer out of the wind tonight. Yep. The other concern would be if we're in the trees, we probably wouldn't have starling and I need to upload. Yep. It's not windy. No, it's not windy. And we stay inside all the time. The only thing that I would say is Jake just said about starling. Starling has saved our butts so many times on this trip, but on every single trip that we've taken around Australia. So we have a referral code. It gives us one month free, but it also gives you one month free. So I'll put it down in the description. And if you feel like using it and you are signing up to Starlink anyway, then you may as well get yourself one month free. But there's nothing as good as Starlink. Like it's expensive. However, it really can't be beat. It is the safety net that we need every single time we go out of reception. It means that we don't carry a sat phone, which is awesome. So that's one less thing that you have to pay for if you've got Starlink. It is the best. So we've just pulled up to the Carcross desert and we thought, should we drive on the sand dunes? And then we thought, oh, there were so many tourists here. Felt like a bit of a scene, but let me show you. Look at this. This is just as good. But how sick is this? We are in the sand dunes. Anyone would think we're in Australia, but we aren't. We're in Canada, in the Yukon. So very far north. And there's mountains right next to the family. That's probably crazy if you ask me. Bloody crazy. Look at that. That's pretty magical. And you know how I was just saying that we thought it was a bit of a scene to come out and drive on here. Jake just can't help himself. He was like, wait a minute, I'm just going to go. If you hit the car, you probably hurt him. So any second now, he's going to be hooning through here somewhere. I'm bloody unfit guys. I'm doing too many K's in the car and not enough K's on the foot, on the foot fountains. So anyway, we need to get a few more of those under our belt, I reckon. Can you hear that? That's the sound of an old land cruiser starting up. There's no way he'll make that even halfway up that hill. Dropped the gear too late in the piece, I reckon, son. God, he's really on it, isn't he? Foot down, foot down, foot down. God, you can hear it. That's pretty crazy. Smoke contortionist act. Good morning, you guys. Last night, we didn't sleep well because I thought that there were bears outside, but there weren't because there's no other footprints except for mine and Hazel. Hazel was there last night. Hazel was there, wasn't she? Even though we got no sleep, we did make 40,000 subscribers, which is so exciting. Thank you guys so much. That's all you that did that. I know. I can't believe we've got 40,000 subscribers. It's amazing. I know that's like, you know, that's not like the biggest channel in the world. However, to us, it's our whole lives and like every single person who's watched or subscribed or liked or shared it to a friend or whatever it is, you have made this possible. Us living in our troop carrier in Canada. About to go to the United States today. We're going to America today. We're going to Alaska. We're going to go step our little feet in Alaska, which is also crazy. I know. Can you imagine, guys? Look at what we look at right here. That's insane, actually. That's not even a joke. Look further around. Look at those mountains around there. And we're just on the sand. And this is a free camp. Like what? The free camps in Canada cannot be beat. They can't be beat. They cannot. I don't think I know of anywhere that's got better free camps. I've only camped in Australia and Canada. Are you dissing? No, no. I mean, better for free camps. I still love my home. No, me too. I think the Australian ones are really good, though. Yeah, the free camps that are Australian free camps are exceptional. Yeah, I think there's so many that we... I know which one you're going to think of. What? The one on the west coast. What is it called? Oh yeah, that kind of stuff. Nothing compares. What's that called? Creek. Bard Creek. Bard Creek. Up north of Broome is amazing. But just even think about things like the Murray. The Murray is amazing in summer. I think it's just different. Australia is hot and you swim. Yeah. Whereas here, it's just like the views are so much better. That's what it is. It's just that the scenery is better here. But for tourism and busyness. The most popular. It's probably one of the most popular places you can go to. Tourist trap. And you can free camp 20 minutes out of it on a lake. And that's what we're gonna do today. So I'm really excited. We're going into the United States of America. 48th state. We're going to the 48th state today. I don't think it's the 48th state. I think it's the 49th. No, I think it's the 48th. I think it's 49th and then Hawaii is 50th. Do you know that? Anyway. Anyway. We've got stuff to do. People to see. People to be. That's inspiring. About five minutes from our camp and the car cross desert is a little town called Chilkoot. And we've heard from a lot of people that the sourdough bakery here is the best in the Yukon. It was a super quirky shop and everyone had said that we need to try the cinnamon buns. So we went in Rome. We've gone into the Chilkoot bakery. It's a sourdough exclusive bakery. And we bought this you guys. It's a cinnamon bun. And it's warm. They've heated it up. It's warm. I'm so excited. Me too. So I think you eat cinnamon buns here with oats because they're so gooey. So that's so good. Jacob you are gonna lose your mind. You're just gonna eat it all. No. That's so good right? That's the best. I've not eaten many cinnamon buns. It's not really a common thing in Australia to have a cinnamon bun. But that is so yummy. I have to keep holding this down. Well after filling our tanks with water and our stomachs with cinnamon buns we headed down the road towards Skagway. But I think the troop is taking a little bit of damage from last night's antics. Mirror's about to fall off. Oh it happened. It must have hit it on a tree. Yeah it's cracked. Damn. What are we gonna do about that? Well I can glue it back together. But tape it maybe for now? Just stick some glue in it. Yeah. It's fixed. This road into Skagway is apparently one of the most scenic roads in northwest Canada. And I'm starting to see why. We passed through the Canadian border office and I tell you what these guys have an unreal view from their workplace. So we've just crossed past the Canadian side of the border and we've still got about 12 kilometers to get to the Alaskan border which means right now we're driving through no man's land. Like this is, it says you're entering a different time zone. That's pretty cool. But at the moment this isn't being patrolled by Canada or the United States. Which is really weird. I don't know whether, I mean there's no speed limit. Bother us anyway if we can have a speed. No. I don't think we've gone faster than 100 kilometers an hour this whole time. No. No. Speed limit 70. Maximum 70. 70 watt though. I don't know 70 in this. Look someone's living in no man's land right here. Maybe it's not no man's land. Maybe it's still Canada. We don't really know. We're making it up. Now it's 90. They're speeding it up. Yeah. Yeah it's a strange strange place you know. Halfway between nowhere. We're about to cross into the United States. Oh my gosh. Welcome to the USA US customs and integration eight miles ahead stop and report. There's the sign. We've crossed it. We haven't. We're like, this is crazy. This is so crazy. Our first country border. We haven't crossed the border security yet. We've still got eight miles did it say? Eight miles. But we'll get a photo right here. The welcome to Alaska. This is so crazy. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. We made it. Alrighty people. Welcome to possibly one of the most tourist focused towns we have ever seen. But to be honest that doesn't mean it wasn't beautiful. And as we found out there was plenty to look at. The first shop we've been in. Oh it's a hardware store. Oh we need tools. There we go. Yes there's dogs. So usually I would say we don't get sucked into tourist traps that much. But I feel like maybe we have with Sagway. Skagway. Skagway. Sorry I can't even say it. Babe look at this. We had a fair look around the town and there was a cruise ship in. So that meant that everywhere was pretty busy. But we didn't mind. There was a cool museum to look at with a photo of Togo the sled dog. If you don't know who Togo is you should look him up but after you finish this video. He is a real hero. We grabbed a bite to eat and headed out of the town. We had planned to stay overnight but one day was enough to see what we needed. All right so we wandered around the town of Skagway and it was like really cute. It was really cute but it was very touristy and it was very much where you spend a lot of money. We did however go and have a beer. We did go to the saloon old brothel but we thought hey let's hit the road so we can try and get into the rest of Alaska because that is what we're so excited for. And so we are heading back out and it was a brief trip but it was lovely. It was also very touristy so I'm excited to see the real so wild animals like I can't wait. We've had another shutdown of our battery system and so what's happened I don't know if you guys can see that but there's like smoke coming out of our where our diesel heater is because it just got shut off like while it was running so it's just pouring smoke out inside the cab which is pretty crazy. I don't know how it does that. It must anyway I'm gonna have to disconnect and reconnect the battery now which is a shame. Yeah tried to come back on once but I think there was too much stuff still turned on. Oh my gosh you guys. I need a bigger zoom lens. That is so crazy. I can't believe there's a wolf on the lake. That is so crazy. Wow look at this view. Look at it. It's just like a speck on the snow. How amazing to see a lone wolf out in the middle of a lake. I tell you what how wildlife spotting is getting better every day. So another day of driving begins ahead of us. We did have a chance to pass through Whitehorse which is the capital of the Yukon. A good spot for us to stock up on supplies as we head along this road and if you've noticed there is a crazy amount of abandoned buildings and businesses up this way. I think we can attribute that to the pandemic and people not traveling through for a few years. What a shame as I bet some of these places were magnificent back in the day. All right guys we are on the Alaskan highway but my gosh this feels like any old outback road. Yeah it's crazy it's just heard of gravel which is good but yeah we're about 139km from the Alaskan border. But yeah we sort of didn't really film much today because we've just been driving and you know. That's boring. I'm just trying to think what like interesting things are happening. Oh we lost a mirror. Oh yeah we lost a mirror. No mirror there anymore. No so that's that's great that's good for us. So that's the first thing we need to do when we get to Fairbanks is fix that. Yeah and then yeah what else it's about 8 30 at night as you can see by how dark it is. Yeah it's getting really dark and you know what they say don't don't drive after 8 30 so it's gonna start to get really scary. It didn't get the sun didn't set until about 11 last night so. It wasn't 11. It was still light at 11. Yeah it was still light but the sun had set maybe at like 10. Yeah. But anyway we're boring we've just been doing like so many kilometers. I said to Jakey like we've never driven this far ever and it feels like we just feel like we've been driving for days because we literally have been driving for days. Yeah there's just not much to stop at so we drove through Whitehorse today which is like one of the biggest cities actually the capital city of the Yukon and it was cool but there was nothing really there for us to like book a car so we just kept driving. Yeah we just kept driving so and now we're nearly at the border which is pretty cool because we're finally gonna be well we're going to where we need to go. But anyway well that's just a little update from us I suppose we'll just keep driving and we'll see when we well actually we did see a moose we saw our very first moose. Yeah. We also saw two um two lynxes run across the road. That was cool. Or do you say lynx two lynx not lynxes must just say lynx. It's like sheep. We just saw two sheep. Yeah probably I would say lynx yeah. We said we so we saw a moose two lynx and a grizzly bear today we saw a grizzly bear today which was like so high up on our list we're ticking off all the animals really quick and Jakey seems to think that's on the side of the road. Yeah like. But that's unlike. I don't know what they are. But like stand up on their back legs like quite tall but they're only like maybe like 20 centimeters because they wouldn't even be a ruler length would they. So yeah I would say like 20 centimeters tall with really tiny. So we've seen a lot of wildlife today which has been really really cool. You saw a bald eagle yesterday. Yeah it's been going on. Yeah the wildlife has been absolutely coming through. We've been stoked but anyway not much more to report aside from that. Yeah we just keep on trucking. This road is so bad. This is the alaskan great alaskan highway. Yeah guys before but the truth be as much as it's a great vehicle to this it's um it hasn't been hasn't been ideal coming up here because the trucks are really wide and they put like divots so like ruts in the road and so the whole time we just snake and like like sort of like we can't sit in the ruts. We can't sit in the ruts like we just bounce between them like the whole time. It doesn't matter like whether it's in the road or like especially on a dirt road like this and we just go like that and it's I have my two hands on the wheel the whole time like I've been gripping this thing like this for days. I can't just in Australia I just hold on like that. Can't be done. Yeah you just like this the whole time. You have to hold on for dear life. Hold on Terry. Crazy man. I don't know if this is normal. Speaking of Alaska we're in Alaska. We made it. We made it. Well I mean we've already been to Alaska but we're in the real Alaska. We're in the mainland part of Alaska. I don't know if any of you guys have ever driven this road before. We are getting air off the bumps at the moment. It's crazy. I don't know if it's like going to get better now that we're in Alaska but the road between well the US border and Whitehorse pretty much was horrible. So bad. Horrendous. Horrendous. Like we're getting air. We're off the side of the road. We're like in gravel. There's like ditches and and potholes like it's really gnarly. Crazy. But we're excited. It's 9 30. Oh it's 10 o'clock but it's only gained an hour which is really nice now that we're in Alaska. The border was really the guy was a legend. He had the best hair. But I think because we went to Alaska the other day it was just really easy. We didn't extra things or stuff. You have to like pay this fee. I mean like we're just trying to make this interview but there's really it's just another problem. We've got 36 minutes until we there was photos of birds on Google so. But anyway we're excited. We're buzzing. It is late so we're only buzzing to a certain level that you can buzz to at this time of night without the help of alcohol and drugs. Yes and also it's like I don't know how many K's we've done today but however many K's from Skagway to the Alaskan border we've done almost all of them. Yeah we drove from pretty much Skagway. Pretty much the border. We've driven the Alaskan border into Canada through the Alaskan border again. Anyway we'll stop yapping and we'll probably see you guys in the morning.