-----We awoke in Whitehorse with a singular goal: reach the Last Frontier. By distance, we had conquered much of the Alaska Highway, but the roughest parts were to come. The Yukon's 511 service, along with the advice proffered by the ladies at the Watson Lake welcome center, told us that the roughest gravel breaks and frost heaves were to be found in permafrost territory north of Destruction Bay.

-----Rain—steady but not hard—dominated the first part of the journey, and the mountain peaks were lost in the low-lying clouds, as they had been for much of our time in the Yukon capital. As soon as we got out of the outlying subdivisions of Whitehorse, traffic once again thinned to its barest. The clouds kept us from seeing many of the day's mountain peaks, and though we missed out on some of the highway's greatest scenery en route to Haines Junction, we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that our return journey would take us on the same stretch.

-----Haines Junction, like everything else in the Yukon, is an extremely small town. We pulled onto one of the few side roads and went into the Village Bakery, which is small yet sprawling, with a huge front porch tucked away into the forest. It's a hip and happening place for a town of less than 600 people, and it felt like half were at the Bakery. It felt no different from walking into an independent bakery in Portland. They also baked a mean scone, and when push comes to shove, that's what really matters.

-----We topped off gas in Haines Junction, having completed roughly a third of the distance from Whitehorse to the Alaska border. Destruction Bay was the next stop, and my parents reminisced about their misadventures in the great northwest nearly thirty years ago. As we rolled through Destruction Bay, they pointed out the place at which they'd stayed.

-----As we got ever closer to Alaska, things got bigger. The highway passed over the flat bed of the all-but-dry Slims River and traversed the south side of Kluane Lake, the largest in the Yukon, which kept going ... and going ... and going. Destruction Bay is named for an inlet on Kluane Lake where a storm took out a bunch of equipment during construction of the highway. All along the area—since exiting Haines Junction, really—we were on the north side of Kluane National Park, which contains the largest non-polar ice fields in the world. (While we'd been pronouncing the name as KLOO-ann, it's actually kloo-WAN-ee.) Its shrouded peaks paralleled us all the way to Alaska.

-----While many Yukon communities are few and far between, there are not many miles between Destruction Bay and the much earlier settlement in Burwash Landing, site of a small gold rush at the turn of the century. That legacy continues to this day with the massive gold pan—billed as the world's largest—emblazoned with the town name. Of course, while Burwash Landing is large enough to be on maps, it's still a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of place.

-----Burwash Landing represented a bit of a rubicon for our travels. We'd encountered hideous roller coaster-like frost heaves and had to endure gravel breaks, but we braced for the worst as we got into permafrost territory. Fortunately, we were spared that which we most feared as we worked our way to Beaver Creek, the westernmost settlement in all of Canada. In the five or so miles up to Beaver Creek, it was nothing but barely-patched potholes, sections of slick resurfacing atop scratchy and gravelly chipsealed pavement, and wavy frost heaves that left us dizzy after the worst sections.

-----A respite in Beaver Creek was well-deserved, and in the visitor center, we encountered a lively and friendly 65-year old French Canadian woman who'd lived all over the country and takes multi-month solo RV trips to the States in the winters. She regaled us with stories of fussing at cops in the Florida Keys, accidentally turning into a California penitentiary in a futile search for a campground, and much more. We returned the favor with some advice about hiking in Zion National Park.

-----There are thirty miles from Beaver Creek to the Alaska border, and those thirty miles proved to be amongst the worst. Just outside of Beaver Creek is the Canadian customs station, but one has to go past the Alaska border to get to US customs. The thirty miles of road in the aforementioned liminal space is not particularly well-maintained by either side; it was paved (for a certain definition of the word paved), but aside from that, little in the way of complements can be paid.

-----Finally, we reached the Alaska border, where there is a pull-out to take a picture with the sign as well as some information panels. The international border, which is kept tree-free by an international commission, stretches far as the eye can see in either direction, running from Mount Saint Elias in the south to the Arctic Ocean in the far, far north.

-----But as thrilling as it was to finally make it to the Last Frontier, our day's journey had not yet concluded. We spent some time at the border crossing, but not because it was a long process; we could have been in and out in less than two minutes, but we got talking to the border officer and inquired about the nature of some of the highways we'd be on. As it turns out, the fellow had taken a motorcycle trip all the way up to Prudhoe Bay and splits time between the two road border crossings between Alaska and the Yukon.

-----Finally back to miles instead of kilometers, the speed limit now read an unbelievable 65 MPH, a speed which—if reached—would send most travelers airborne on the frost heaves, of which there were more than enough. The further we got on the highway, the better they got, but we dealt with the worst of them amongst the mountains leading out of the border.

-----Almost immediately after crossing, we caught a glimpse of the majestic Wrangell Mountains to the south. While the Kluanes were epic, the distant, almost totally snow-covered majesty of the Wrangells just screamed "Alaska." Getting out of the car at a pullout left us with a silence so thorough that walking felt almost like desecration.

-----Not too much further down the road lay the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge welcome center. We arrived at 4:30 Alaska time, which was precisely when they closed up shop. We went on the center's immense back porch to catch more beautiful views of the Wrangell Mountains, only to hear a chorus of angry squawking and a small rush of wind above our heads. A horde of cliff swallows came rushing in and rushing out of their mud nests, nestled underneath the roofline of the center. We did not know what species kept screaming at us and buzzing our heads until we happened to come back to the car right as the park ranger was driving away. She rolled down her window and asked us if we had any questions, which is how we learned the name of the species.

-----Views of the Wrangells framed the forests, the thousand unnamed ponds, and the Tanana River, which made for an epic drive when we could spare some time from the distorted and mangled road. Yet as we descended towards Tok, it became possible to do the long-signed (but long-insane) 65. Before we knew it, we were in the tiny town of Tok.

-----We had dinner at Fast Eddy's, a place where you can seemingly get everything, and their portions are Alaska-sized. I had a massive chicken burger with a side of beer-battered fries, which was the most unique thing on the menu. They were fluffy and crispy, just as all fries should be. My mom had a huge burger—and these are truly epic, half-the-size-of-your-head portions. Mushrooms, tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and the rest of the works topped a perfectly cooked burger that lived up to its name of "the incredible burger." My dad got a personal pizza, with a thick but airy crust. Generous toppings and just the right amount of cheese balanced it all out.

-----Our waitress brought out the check, but we were not yet done. Dessert were milkshakes: my dad had a strawberry shake, and I had a Butterfinger shake. It came out so cold and chunky that I couldn't suck it through the straw to save my life, and it wasn't until much later that it began to deliciously emerge.

-----Tomorrow: we finish the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction en route to Fairbanks.