Originally Posted by jackal

As mentioned above, welcome to FT!

I'm an ambitious traveler, and even I must admit your itinerary looks a touch ambitious.

I drove (albeit with a large group of people--10 in a 12-passenger van) from Valdez to Anchorage after taking the ferry to Valdez the day before. We left Valdez at a reasonably early hour (9am, give or take) and didn't get back to Anchorage until after 8pm. Yes, the drive can be done as a marathon in 5 hours, but that leaves absolutely no time to enjoy the scenery along the way, stop and eat, or anything else. Anchorage to Valdez to Kenny Lake in one long day is very ambitious. Stop in Valdez overnight and enjoy the area rather than making a brief pit stop before turning back around and going back north.

It's also ambitious to expect to do Kennecott/McCarthy as a round-trip in a single day followed by driving all the way to Fairbanks. McCarthy is a good six-hour round-trip drive (yes, it's not a long way in mileage, but 30mph is generous for that road), not to mention the time you'd spend visiting Kennecott/McCarthy itself (plan to spend at least a couple of hours milling around the mine ruins--it's not worth driving all the way out there not to do that, since the scenery will seem bland after passing through Thompson Pass). Plus, your rental car agency is guaranteed to prohibit you from driving to McCarthy--and for good reason; I had to replace all of my shock absorbers after my trip out there many years ago. I know many friends who have bought new windshields after driving out there, and one friend with a lifted four-wheel-drive truck with super-heavy-duty tires ended up getting stuck because he got not one but two railroad spike punctures. Add in that you're doing this in muddy May, and I'd definitely recommend against it. Stick to the paved, maintained roads.

I'd skip Kennecott/McCarthy and just go straight to Fairbanks.

If you skip Denali due to Gardyloo's salient advice, I'd stay a night at Chena Hot Springs. Be sure to hit the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum of the North. Way better than the ice museum. UAF is also home to some very interesting geophysical science research projects and a major supercomputer processing center; if you have time to check out some of their goings-on, it's a fun diversion. See http://www.uaf.edu/visituaf/ and http://www.uaf.edu/summer/visitor-in.../campus-tours/