Bellevue Washington through Canada to Alaska via Ferry.

[AlaskaPilot]

Rivian travel log, Bellevue Washington to Anchorage Alaska via the Alaska State Ferry.



We just purchased a new R1S with dual motors and the Max Pack battery. Picked up the car in Bellevue washington and drove to Alaska via the Alaska State Ferry. Had some adapter issues and charges being down, but overall went smoothly.



The adapters and travel charger we were expecting to have with the car were not there. We had gotten bad info about the travel charger being included with our dual motor and it wasn’t. In addition, the gear shop was delayed, so we didn’t get the adaptors we ordered ahead of time and didn’t want to miss the boat, literally speaking. They were waiting for us in Alaska when we arrived, but that didn’t help is on the trip.



That meant we could only charge on NACS and J1772. (2026 has NACS native) Home depot to the rescue, and we got a CCS1 adaptor and at Fred Meyer we got an adaptor from NEMA 14-50 to 10-30, so we could charge at RV parks if necessary which turned out to be necessary. The Rivan repair center we picked up the car at gave us a portable charger that would plug into 110V or 240V NEMA 14-50 but only had J1772 on the other end, so we had to further adapt from J1772 to NACS. (Remember the movie Christmas Vacation?).



Did a little local driving around and shake down and test our charging lash up, got used to the car and saw some friends in the area and drove to Bellingham to catch the Alaska Marine Ferry from Bellingham to Haines Alaska.



We charged to 100% (410 miles) in Bellingham about two miles from the terminal. (Had to reset charging limit, default was I think 90%) ) Waited about 3 1/2 hours for loading the boat and got on with 405 miles charge showing once we were on the boat. (Lost 5 miles range getting to the ferry line and in the lot sitting in line)



They loaded us last, so if we caught fire, they could push us off into the ocean. (Only 25 out of 100,000 EVs catch fire compared to over 1,500 out of 100,000 every year, but fear is involved and not rational).



The vampire loss meant we were at 395 when we arrived in Haines three days later. (398 after departing Ketchikan, had to move the car some on the ferry to get stuff that was behind it )



Our plan for the 735 miles to Anchorage was to take 3 days charging where we can, and crossing our fingers a little. Hopefully Haines Junction, Tok, Burwash Landing, and Glenallen will have some ability to get power.



It’s 352 long miles from Burwash Landing Yukon Territory to Glenallen Alaska with no chargers. Tok has some RV related chargers and we can do 110V, but that takes forever. Beaver Creek charging station shows down for maintenance in Plug share. Some reports in Glenallen also show it as being successful for some, but not most. At least there used to be the backup plan of an RV site and a night in a hotel.



At Haines Junction we recharged at the Visitors information center, nice charger at the center and walked to town for an ok chinese food dinner.



Getting a hotel reservation along the highway at places that had charging turned out to be a problem. We topped up the charger in Burwash Landing. We tried Beaver Creek, but the charger was down and there were no hotels were available as well. Had to run all the way to Tok to get a hotel and the hotel only had 110v and that had a bad ground so not even a trickle there.



We decided to top up at an RV park in Tok (Alaska Stoves Campground) but that was pretty slow and we wanted to get on the road. The Plugshare App was indicating that the Glenallen Recharge Alaska station may or may not be available. This made it seem wise to go up to Delta Junction for a recharge at another Recharge Alaska station. Left notes in Plug share about the problem so others don’t get into the same pickle.



When we got to Delta Junction, there was an adaptor compatibility problem with the charging station, and we couldn’t charge there. That meant we were down to about 22 miles range so the only option was to find an RV lot to charge. Fortunately the Snowed Hill inn RV park was only a mile away, so we parked there and got an hotel for the night about a mile walk away while the car charged all the way up. Took 20 hours and one minute for 140.6 KWh (141 kWh battery pack, so we were on the electronic version of fumes).



We drove from Delta Junction to the 3 bears in Chugiak on one charge, 311 miles and charged at the Tesla charger there. Very fast, in 26 minutes we had picked up 260 miles of range.



From there we headed to the airport to pick up the car we left there and back home via the dog kennel in Tikatnu center and home to Chugiak. After an overnight and resupply of dog food, we headed out to Homer 244 miles the following day on a single charge.



At Present, our 2026 Rivian with the NACS plug can’t charge at the Recharge Alaska fast chargers at Delta Junction and at Glenallen, and likley others even with a CCS to NACS adapter. They are not up to the new NACS J3400 standard. Good phone support but they couldn’t fix the hardware on the phone. They are working on addressing this, but currently there are no fast chargers from Burwash landing to Wasilla that we can use. (Burwash worked for us but is not very fast.) Glenallen was also down for a cord issue as well.



No issues with the car at all, everything worked well, but we did have some learning to do about how things worked and how to turn off the headlights going through customs at night. Also how the wipers worked (Suggest you figure that out before getting to customs, don’t want a grumpy customs agent) One enthusiastic lady at the Canadian customs station outside of Haines wanted to tell us how she loved the Rivian and got gently, but firmly, told to sit down and shut up by the customs agent.



Very happy with the car so far and I t was a great trip on the ferry.

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[R1Tacoma]

Glad to hear it went so well! Any pics to share?

 

[Thedude]

They loaded us last, so if we caught fire, they could push us off into the ocean. (Only 25 out of 100,000 EVs catch fire compared to over 1,500 out of 100,000 every year, but fear is involved and not rational).

It’s absolutely rational. A gas/diesel fire is relatively easily extinguished, even on a boat. That is not true at all for a lithium fueled fire.

 

[AlaskaPilot]

Glad to hear it went so well! Any pics to share?

 

[Budman]

What was the experience like on the ferry? Food, accommodations, trip time, enjoyment level???

 

[AlaskaPilot]

What was the experience like on the ferry? Food, accommodations, trip time, enjoyment level???

Keeping in mind that it’s a ferry not a cruise ship. It was pretty good. The matresses onnthe bunk were foam about 5-6 inches thick. Pillows were a bit on the thin side for me so I actually brougjt mine. The Columbia has a dining room and a cafe for food and the food was pretty good and reasonably priced. Not gourmet, but good basic dining experience. The staff on the car deck were nice and competent.
We boarded at 6:00 am on friday and got off at 11:00 AM the following Monday. Not much time to visit ports along the way, mostly watched from the ship. There were 2:30 hours in Juneau, but at 3:45 AM. We got off in Ketchikan for about an hour for breakfast at the hotel restaurant accross the road from the ferry and that was a good break to stretch legs.

 

[hayduke]

whoa, charging in alaska sounds at least 5 years behind the lower 48. i got my r1t about 3.5 years ago and do a lot of travel in relatively remote nevada / utah / eastern California but that sounds next level! having lots of adapters and cords with you can improve your odds greatly in charging deserts!

 

[Thedude]

whoa, charging in alaska sounds at least 5 years behind the lower 48. i got my r1t about 3.5 years ago and do a lot of travel in relatively remote nevada / utah / eastern California but that sounds next level! having lots of adapters and cords with you can improve your odds greatly in charging deserts!

Probably more than five years honestly.

The distances are huge and the population is tiny compared to most of the lower 48 so catering to electric vehicles is a very low priority. For perspective, over half the Alaskan population lives in the larger Anchorage metro area which is about the size of South Carolina but with 4.7 million fewer people.

 

[Rivian Owner]

Did the ferry have some way to push the Rivian off the deck if it were to catch fire? Most ferrys I've been on have the cars packed like sardines so getting to a burning vehicle with large equipment that could push you off the deck would be nearly impossible.

Thanks for posting, it sounds like your fingernails got a lot shorter while watching your battery get very low!

 

[DD4ST]

Wow! Quite a challenge! Not sure I would strike out with this thin of a charging support base. I was a little confused when you said there was no travel charger but the SC gave you a portable charger. Aren’t they the same?

Please keep posting about your experiences with a Rivian in Alaska. Especially, dealing with extreme cold and any service issues. But also the fun stuff!

 

[schwartz83]

Rivian travel log, Bellevue Washington to Anchorage Alaska via the Alaska State Ferry.



We just purchased a new R1S with dual motors and the Max Pack battery. Picked up the car in Bellevue washington and drove to Alaska via the Alaska State Ferry. Had some adapter issues and charges being down, but overall went smoothly.



The adapters and travel charger we were expecting to have with the car were not there. We had gotten bad info about the travel charger being included with our dual motor and it wasn’t. In addition, the gear shop was delayed, so we didn’t get the adaptors we ordered ahead of time and didn’t want to miss the boat, literally speaking. They were waiting for us in Alaska when we ar

Glad to hear it went so well! Any pics to share?

We made this same trip in July - what difference for charger availability. It was still tough - not nearly as tough as it was for you though. Beaver Creek and Burwash Landing were both up and running. The charger in Glenallen was too which was super helpful. In Tok we had luck at the tundra RV park. Didn't get a on of juice, but enough to get down the road. We already had all of our adapters too. Here's to more adventures!



That meant we could only charge on NACS and J1772. (2026 has NACS native) Home depot to the rescue, and we got a CCS1 adaptor and at Fred Meyer we got an adaptor from NEMA 14-50 to 10-30, so we could charge at RV parks if necessary which turned out to be necessary. The Rivan repair center we picked up the car at gave us a portable charger that would plug into 110V or 240V NEMA 14-50 but only had J1772 on the other end, so we had to further adapt from J1772 to NACS. (Remember the movie Christmas Vacation?).



Did a little local driving around and shake down and test our charging lash up, got used to the car and saw some friends in the area and drove to Bellingham to catch the Alaska Marine Ferry from Bellingham to Haines Alaska.



We charged to 100% (410 miles) in Bellingham about two miles from the terminal. (Had to reset charging limit, default was I think 90%) ) Waited about 3 1/2 hours for loading the boat and got on with 405 miles charge showing once we were on the boat. (Lost 5 miles range getting to the ferry line and in the lot sitting in line)



They loaded us last, so if we caught fire, they could push us off into the ocean. (Only 25 out of 100,000 EVs catch fire compared to over 1,500 out of 100,000 every year, but fear is involved and not rational).



The vampire loss meant we were at 395 when we arrived in Haines three days later. (398 after departing Ketchikan, had to move the car some on the ferry to get stuff that was behind it )



Our plan for the 735 miles to Anchorage was to take 3 days charging where we can, and crossing our fingers a little. Hopefully Haines Junction, Tok, Burwash Landing, and Glenallen will have some ability to get power.



It’s 352 long miles from Burwash Landing Yukon Territory to Glenallen Alaska with no chargers. Tok has some RV related chargers and we can do 110V, but that takes forever. Beaver Creek charging station shows down for maintenance in Plug share. Some reports in Glenallen also show it as being successful for some, but not most. At least there used to be the backup plan of an RV site and a night in a hotel.



At Haines Junction we recharged at the Visitors information center, nice charger at the center and walked to town for an ok chinese food dinner.



Getting a hotel reservation along the highway at places that had charging turned out to be a problem. We topped up the charger in Burwash Landing. We tried Beaver Creek, but the charger was down and there were no hotels were available as well. Had to run all the way to Tok to get a hotel and the hotel only had 110v and that had a bad ground so not even a trickle there.



We decided to top up at an RV park in Tok (Alaska Stoves Campground) but that was pretty slow and we wanted to get on the road. The Plugshare App was indicating that the Glenallen Recharge Alaska station may or may not be available. This made it seem wise to go up to Delta Junction for a recharge at another Recharge Alaska station. Left notes in Plug share about the problem so others don’t get into the same pickle.



When we got to Delta Junction, there was an adaptor compatibility problem with the charging station, and we couldn’t charge there. That meant we were down to about 22 miles range so the only option was to find an RV lot to charge. Fortunately the Snowed Hill inn RV park was only a mile away, so we parked there and got an hotel for the night about a mile walk away while the car charged all the way up. Took 20 hours and one minute for 140.6 KWh (141 kWh battery pack, so we were on the electronic version of fumes).



We drove from Delta Junction to the 3 bears in Chugiak on one charge, 311 miles and charged at the Tesla charger there. Very fast, in 26 minutes we had picked up 260 miles of range.



From there we headed to the airport to pick up the car we left there and back home via the dog kennel in Tikatnu center and home to Chugiak. After an overnight and resupply of dog food, we headed out to Homer 244 miles the following day on a single charge.



At Present, our 2026 Rivian with the NACS plug can’t charge at the Recharge Alaska fast chargers at Delta Junction and at Glenallen, and likley others even with a CCS to NACS adapter. They are not up to the new NACS J3400 standard. Good phone support but they couldn’t fix the hardware on the phone. They are working on addressing this, but currently there are no fast chargers from Burwash landing to Wasilla that we can use. (Burwash worked for us but is not very fast.) Glenallen was also down for a cord issue as well.



No issues with the car at all, everything worked well, but we did have some learning to do about how things worked and how to turn off the headlights going through customs at night. Also how the wipers worked (Suggest you figure that out before getting to customs, don’t want a grumpy customs agent) One enthusiastic lady at the Canadian customs station outside of Haines wanted to tell us how she loved the Rivian and got gently, but firmly, told to sit down and shut up by the customs agent.



Very happy with the car so far and I t was a great trip on the ferry.

 

[schwartz83]

Keeping in mind that it’s a ferry not a cruise ship. It was pretty good. The matresses onnthe bunk were foam about 5-6 inches thick. Pillows were a bit on the thin side for me so I actually brougjt mine. The Columbia has a dining room and a cafe for food and the food was pretty good and reasonably priced. Not gourmet, but good basic dining experience. The staff on the car deck were nice and competent.
We boarded at 6:00 am on friday and got off at 11:00 AM the following Monday. Not much time to visit ports along the way, mostly watched from the ship. There were 2:30 hours in Juneau, but at 3:45 AM. We got off in Ketchikan for about an hour for breakfast at the hotel restaurant accross the road from the ferry and that was a good break to stretch legs.

Nothing much to add here, other than we slept in lounge chairs in the solarium. - super comfortable with our sleeping mats and bags and surprisingly peaceful. We also brought on some of our own food for variety. Ramen or similar and popped it in the microwave.

 

[AlaskaPilot]

Wow! Quite a challenge! Not sure I would strike out with this thin of a charging support base. I was a little confused when you said there was no travel charger but the SC gave you a portable charger. Aren’t they the same?

Please keep posting about your experiences with a Rivian in Alaska. Especially, dealing with extreme cold and any service issues. But also the fun stuff!

I didn’t go into all the back and forth because it would have gotten too long, but we expected to get a Rivian travel charger with the car with NACS plug, and had double checked that with the SC in Bellview. When we got there, they said said it didn’t come with one. In addition, they didn’t have any to purchase, had to do that through the Gear Shop, and wait, so we would have missed our ferry.

We showed them the text message string and eventually they found a used non Rivian travel charger with a J1772 out plug that we could use with a J1772 to NACS adapter. Without that we would have been sunk. Not an ideal situation, but it worked in the end.

We were a bit nervous aboit charging. Bit with the RV parks, we figured we had some redundancy. We were not aware of the incompatibility problem we hit in Delta Junction, until we got there, or we probably would have had a different plan.

If you can be really patient, there area has 110v outlets at a lot of places because people need to plug their cars in engine block heaters to keep them warm. That would have been really slow, but would have eventually gotten us there.

 

[AlaskaPilot]

Did the ferry have some way to push the Rivian off the deck if it were to catch fire? Most ferrys I've been on have the cars packed like sardines so getting to a burning vehicle with large equipment that could push you off the deck would be nearly impossible.

Thanks for posting, it sounds like your fingernails got a lot shorter while watching your battery get very low!

The Ferry has a fork lift that they would have used to push us off if it had been necessary. Since almost all EV battery fires are the result of crashes, it’s a low probability event, but still could have occurred. NTSB has one recorded event in the US of an EV car fire not related to a crash, but could have been road debris, they aren’t sure but may have beed a manufacturing defect. Car fires do occur on ferries and they are prepared to fight them and they have both fresh water and salt water fire hoses on deck as well as fire extinguishers. Most are related to cargo that catches fire but can spread to fuel and propane stored. All propane tanks have to be shut off and they check. RV’s have to use ice chests instead of their propane powered fridge.

 

[DD4ST]

We showed them the text message string and eventually they found a used non Rivian travel charger with a J1772 out plug that we could use with a J1772 to NACS adapter.

If I read you right, your Rivian was delivered without any tupe of charger. I wasn’t aware Rivians no longer came with a portable charger. I guess they assume home chargers are ubiquitous and you don’t need it for fast charging. Put that in the category of not coming with a spare either. Two essential things for long-distance travel.

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