In 2008, Travelers Into Alaska Not Phased By Price Of Gas

Large numbers of RVers come into the Glennallen Visitor Center
in the Copper River Valley, southwest of Tok, too.


High Gas Prices Not A Deterrent To Alaska Travel

The June border counts at Tok aren’t in yet, but Madge Kelleyhouse, manager of the Tok Chamber visitor center, says June looks like a good a month.

In fact, the traffic into the visitor center is so high that she called the Bearfoot offices this weekend to report she already needed a new load of Bearfoot Travel Guides because she was running through the large supply we took up to Tok less than two weeks before. We took her the guides two days later. Madge reported:

“May was down quite a bit. The border traffic was down 11% in May. But we could just see the difference here in town in June. June picked up tremendously. We were pleasantly surprised. We’re seeing a lot more Europeans than normal this time of year.

In May, in two days, we saw 150 RV’s. They were all rental RV’s coming to Alaska, to be rented in Alaska. We were kind of shocked to see that. They all appeared at the same time; they came up as a caravan.”

Madge Kelleyhouse told us that American travelers were coming over the border in their RV’s as usual, and that Tok was seeing a new and interesting shift to fly-in visitors driving rental RV’s from Anchorage to the region. Tok is positioned on the highway south of the historic towns of Eagle, Chicken and Dawson City. In sum:
“In relation to the price of gas, I’m pleasantly surprised at this point.”

JULY 4th UPDATE: Taking guides to the Tok and Delta areas on July 4th we discovered people in Tok were saying that the camper parks were doing well and the price of gas didn’t seem to be affecting traffic coming into the state. In Tok food was overflowing from several large community picnics as well as the traditional 4th of July parade. People were enthusiastic about the season and optimistic that travelers were taking the price of gas in stride.