8,400 Miles to the Arctic Ocean: Flagstaff to Tuktoyaktuk with a One Year Old and a Four Year Old

Seventeen days. 8,400 miles. Two kids under five. One camper. This is the trip we've been talking about doing since I rode the Dalton Highway on my motorcycle back in 2021, and last August we finally pulled it off, this time in the OVRLND, with the whole family strapped in.

How we got there

We left Flagstaff in mid August and made our first stop in Denver, staying a couple nights with my parents to break up the drive and let the kids reset. From there it was Lander, Wyoming, where we camped dispersed up Sinks Canyon. Then the Tetons for some swimming, followed by a night in a Yellowstone campground.

From Yellowstone we headed to Polebridge, Montana and camped at Bowman Lake, which might be one of the most underrated spots we hit the whole trip. I'd done the Continental Divide Trail on my moto years back and remembered a dirt road that runs along the border over to Eureka, so that's how we crossed into Canada instead of taking the highway.

Once in Canada we ran through Banff and Jasper, and at our very first Canadian campground we spotted another OVRLND camper. Turned out to be a customer we'd never actually met in person, also traveling with two kids. Our boys played together for a bit while we talked shop about the build. Small world moments like that are wild and I love seeing our campers out and about.

From Jasper we pushed to Mount Robson and hiked into Kinney Lake, which was an incredible hike. Our four year old ran down the whole thing, earning the nickname "trail running toddler." Then north along the Cassiar Highway, with a detour into Hyder, Alaska to see Salmon Glacier and eat fish and chips out of an old bus that's become a bit of a local landmark. Back on the Cassiar, we camped our way up toward Dawson City.

Onto the Dempster

Dawson City is an old gold mining town with dirt roads through downtown. We camped just south of town, then turned onto the Dempster Highway, one of the most remote roads in North America and the whole reason this trip existed in my head for four years.

First stop on the Dempster was Tombstone Territorial Park, where we camped and hiked toward Grizzly Lake. It's hard to describe how stunning that country is. We got a light snow the night we stayed at Tombstone and the tundra was already turning yellow, red and orange, all of it framed against these dark, jagged mountains.

From Tombstone we kept pushing north and camped just after crossing into the Arctic Circle, then made our way into Tuktoyaktuk. We camped right on the ocean at the city campground, ate dinner at Grandma's (a small local spot that's basically a rite of passage up there), and then did the thing you have to do when you make it that far north: I swam in the Arctic Ocean. The four year old was busy playing with his excavator and didn't feel like getting wet, so I guess we'll have to go back.

Being up in the Arctic camping on the ocean with two kids was an awesome experience that none of us will forget, at least Maggie and I won't. The kids will probably claim they remember this on their future Tinder profiles.

On the way back through Dawson, I did the sourtoe cocktail. If you don't know what that is, it's a Dawson City tradition where you drink a shot with an actual preserved human toe (frostbitten or diabetic) dropped in the glass, and as long as your lips touch the toe, you get a certificate. Yes, it's exactly as strange as it sounds. When in Rome.

How the trip actually ended

By the time we were coming out of the Dempster, our four year old was running on fumes. No screen time the entire trip, strapped into a car seat for hours a day, on a road that's rough even for adults. When we got back to Dawson City to camp, we made the call that I'd fly out of Whitehorse with both boys while Maggie drove the whole way home solo. She did it in three days.

The camper setup that made it work

We ran an OVRLND All You Can Eat Chubby, built on a 6.5 foot bed Gen 3 Tundra. We went with the Chubby camper specifically because of the kids. The 7” of extra width made my build possible.

A few things stood out as genuinely essential, not just nice to have.

The side windoors were huge for us. Being able to access the camper from the side instead of just the back made loading and unloading kids, gear, and snacks so much easier throughout the day. One of the windoors was dedicated to our chair for easy road side access, and the other windoor was dedicated to coats and hiking carriers.

The extra bed height on our build meant we could store most of our gear up on the bed platform and still have room to actually live underneath it. That height also gave the kids a place to climb up and play with us on cold mornings before we got the day going.

The asymmetrical barn doors turned out to matter more than I expected. We almost never opened the smaller passenger side door, which meant we always had a stable, closed off wall on that side, useful with little kids running around a campsite.

The fan was an MVP. It kept the space cool enough for mid day naps, which with two small kids on a road trip is basically the whole ballgame. Before this trip I didn’t really promote getting one fan or the other, but having the Deluxe open in the rain changed my mind.

The whole build was purpose built over a couple days using Milwaukee Packout boxes (See this link for in depth youtube build walkthough) as the base structure. Finding the right sleep setup for a one year old took some real trial and error. I went down a rabbit hole trying to find a pack n play that would actually fit the space, and landed on an Elitefield soft dog crate with blackout curtains added. It fit the exact footprint I had available, so that's where our one year old slept the entire trip. The kennel worked great and would recommend to anyone looking for something simple for this application.

Our four year old slept on a platform I built on top of the Packouts that could convert into a table with seating. We never actually needed the table function since the weather stayed so good, so it just stayed as his bed the whole seventeen days.

On the driving side, we put Bilstein 6100s on the truck before the trip, and it made a real difference. The Dempster is famous for washboard sections that can rattle a rig apart, and the 6100s smoothed that out significantly.

The real challenges

Travel with a one year old still on bottles meant a nightly routine. We packed enough bottles to just wash them each evening instead of trying to sterilize on the road, and Maggie and I traded off. The late night feed, usually around 11pm, meant one of us on the ground in the dark, cramped inside the camper, feeding him before putting him back in his "crate."

Potty training our four year old on the road was its own project. We built a home bucket system with trash bags, a toilet seat attachment, and a toddler seat on top of that. It sounds simple but it genuinely worked well the entire trip.

To manage two small kids for six to eight hour driving days, we kept a hard rule of pulling over roughly every hour just to let them run around on the side of the road. We also capped driving at six hours a day max. Both of those decisions did more for keeping everyone sane than anything else we planned.

Why this trip mattered

I've spent most of my adult life chasing solo trips, big mile backpacking, bikepacking, moto trips like the Dalton. Finding a rhythm for adventure as a parent has honestly been hard. This trip is the first one that put all of it together for me. New terrain, hunting for campsites, figuring out logistics on the fly, but also just genuinely fun traveling with the kids. Watching our four year old find "good dirt" to run Hot Wheels through, or climb a random gravel pile at a pullout, gave the whole trip a different kind of meaning. We're already planning the next one.

When to go

If you're thinking about the Dempster or Tuktoyaktuk, go mid to late August. I've been to the Arctic twice now, once on the Dalton by moto and now the Dempster with the family, and both trips landed end of August. The tundra is turning for fall, the color is unreal, and the bugs are basically gone. We saw very few mosquitoes the whole trip.

What we couldn't have done it without

Hiking carriers, a triple wide Kelty chair, kid headlamps, rugged kids pants for crawling around, a stash of Hot Wheels, and of course, the camper.