Alaska Tour

Alaska is the bucket list destination for North American RV and campervan travellers - a state so vast it could contain Texas twice over, with a road network sparse enough that driving it feels like genuine exploration rather than tourism. This 21-day grand loop is as complete a picture of Alaska as a single road trip can deliver: the Fortymile gold rush country of the Interior, the university city of Fairbanks under the Midnight Sun, the sub-Arctic wilderness of Healy and the approaches to Denali, the quirky climbing town of Talkeetna, the glacier-carved drama of Whittier and Prince William Sound, the astonishing peninsula drive to Homer - the Halibut Capital of the World - and finally the epic ALCAN highway south through the Yukon and British Columbia to the remote frontier town of Hyder.

What makes Alaska so extraordinary for camper travellers is the scale of everything. The moose are bigger than horses. The mountains make the Alps look modest. The rivers run jade-green with glacial melt. Brown bears fish salmon alongside the road. Eagles outnumber crows. And the light - particularly in June and July, when the sun barely sets - turns every evening into a golden hour that never ends. You will not sleep normally. You will not want to. You will cook dinner at 11pm in full daylight and feel like you've been given extra hours that the rest of the world doesn't have.

Alaska rewards slow travellers. The distances look manageable on a map until you realise that 100 miles of Alaska highway often takes three hours - roads are remote, wildlife crossings are frequent, and the scenery demands constant stopping. The 21-day structure of this trip is not generous; it is approximately right. Rush it and you will arrive home with beautiful photographs but a nagging sense that you saw Alaska through a windscreen rather than experiencing it. Take the time to fish, to hike, to sit beside a river and watch for bear, to do absolutely nothing for an hour in a place of extraordinary beauty. That is when Alaska begins to make sense.

Camper bucket list

• Pan for real gold at Chicken Gold Camp - and keep whatever you find

• Watch the Midnight Sun from your camper at Fairbanks at 1am, the sky still glowing amber

• See Denali - all 20,310 feet of it - from the Eielson Visitor Center on a rare clear day

• Book a flightseeing tour from Talkeetna over the Alaska Range and circle the summit of Denali from the air

• Drive the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel - the longest shared road-rail tunnel in North America - to reach Whittier

• Kayak among calving icebergs in Prince William Sound out of Whittier

• Pull up a 100-pound halibut from 250 feet of water on a Homer Spit fishing charter

• Watch brown bears fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls - accessible by floatplane from Homer or King Salmon

• Wake up at Primrose campground beside Kenai Lake to absolute silence, a mirror-still lake, and no other humans in sight

• Cross back into British Columbia on the ALCAN and spend a final night in Hyder - a town so remote it operates on Canadian time