realtraveller's Full Review: The Milepost Magazine
When I'd pictured myself driving Alaska's highways, I had images of my lonely car on a ribbon of highway crossing tundra and taiga, with vast expanses of nothingness in the windshield and the rear view mirror. I thought if I didn't know where every gas station was in Alaska my family could be stranded in the forest with wolves howling as we searched our jacket pockets for crumbs to eat.
Alaska's just not like that.
We saw no "next gas 150 miles signs". There were plenty of lunch spots. Bottom line: I didn't really need The Milepost.
On our trip we did interior Alaska. Alaskan roads are known by names rather than numbers. We drove the Seward Highway, the Sterling Highway, the Glenn Highway, the Richardson Highway and the Parks Highway. In other words, we drove most of the paved roads of interior Alaska.
I used The Milepost exactly twice in two weeks while we were on the road. Both times to find lunch spots. One lunch spot was something we would have missed without The Milepost. It was Rika's Roadhouse in Delta Junction, Alaska. It's a state park preserving the old roadhouse as it was in the 20's and 30's and it also has a restaurant. A very picturesque and historic spot with a spectacular setting along the Tanana River.
Alaska is wonderfully free of highway billboards. There are either small blue road signs directing travelers to business or brown signs to historic or scenic sites. But without the information in The Milepost this good stopping spot would have been missed.
Why I Didn't Use The Milepost While Traveling
- It is too thick and cumbersome. There are ads for every tourist-oriented business in Alaska in it, which adds pages and makes it difficult reading while on the road.
- It's too detailed. I didn't need to read ahead of time that the next stretch of road had an 8% grade or that the passing lane was ending in .1 of a mile. A typical entry of The Milepost is:
V 76.4 F 285.5 "Watch for moose in pond to west".
That means that 76.4 miles from Valdez or 285.5 miles from Fairbanks there may be moose. This type of information comes at you as frequently as every tenth of a mile.
- It's so detailed that it's unusable as you drive along. There is information on historic sites or good spots for viewing glaciers but it's all combined with gravel pullovers, boat launch sites and ads that it's impossible to use as a read along guide while traveling down the road. You'd spend all your time reading and no time looking out the window. The Milepost spent most of its time on the floor of the car, unread and unused.
- Even more difficult to read if you're going in the opposite direction. For example if you're traveling from Valdez to Fairbanks, then you could follow the road normally. We were going from Fairbanks to Valdez, so I had to turn pages backwards, which got confusing.
- There's a full page at the front on how to use The Milepost. I suppose that should have been a clue before I bought it that it would not be self-explanatory and user friendly.
The Good Points
- It's good for travel planning. There are a wealth of photos of lodges, restaurants, fishing charter companies etc. There is extensive information on planning a driving trip to Alaska, along with practical information on the Alaskan Ferry.
- It may be essential if you are traveling down one of the really remote roads in Alaska, like the Dalton Highway or if you're traveling to Alaska on the Alaska Highway.
Alaska's not wild frontier anymore. The Milepost, which bills itself as "Since 1949, the Bible of North Country travel, is not longer necessary for a driving trip of interior Alaska. Maybe it was necessary in 1949, but no longer.
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