For the White Pass & Yukon train: Do they let you get off the train when you get to the Canadian side and stay as long as you want and board whatever available train back to Skagway? Or you have to go back down right away?

I had a Taurus.

If you go on the round trip White Pass RR, you do NOT get off the train in Canada. The only ones to get off the train are the one way tour packages- rail bus combo tours.

Most shops are open until the ship leaves. Gas was $3.13, actually much lower than expected.

Thanks, BQ. If it rains in Skagway, do you advise against driving the South Klondike Hwy? Not sure if it's safe to do so. And whether you can see the sceneries well in the rain.

Where I come from is very dry. Whenever it rains, the accident rate doubles.

Thanks

No problem driving in the rain in my opinion.

Thanks for your contributions, BudgetQueen. Rented an Avis car to drive the Klondike Highway early September.

rented a car last July- drove all the way to Whitehorse- could stop as much as we wanted- I think we were gone about 6-7 hrs-someone on forum at cruise critic had recommended driving and even gave a coupon number- I think we rented the car for $59 and gas wasn't that expensive compared to here

Rent with Avis. Avoid renting from Sourdough. If Avis ran out, make sure your car is sound before taking off.

We recently had to rent with Sourdough because Avis ran out when our cruise stopped in Skagway. It was $80 per day for a beat up Ford Taurus with 140,000 miles on it. And the brake light, turn signal lights not working (we only found out on the hwy!). When we returned the car, we noticed an already bald tire had a flat! Imagine going down that steep Yukon Pass if you had a flat! Lucky for us, the air must have gone out when we got to town.

Hardly anyone drives on that highway so you could get help, let alone having cellular service out there!

We pointed out the flat to the attendant boy and he mumbled oh it's a bad sign and ran to get his boss, who detained us for a while. He opened up the hood to inspect it (what for??) and had the attendant boy pump up the tire and watch if it would deflate.

We were suspecting that they wanted us to pay for the tire too. We pointed out the problems w/ the brake light and turn signal lights and reluctantly they let us go, without any apologies!

We were lucky not to miss the ship that day and nothing happened to us during the drive. It's foolish to have thrown our caution in the wind like that, when at home we make sure we drive only supersafe cars.

We saw others rented from Avis, and they got new Nissan altima or Maxima.

Forgot to mention another problem with our Sourdough car was some of the doors didn't close properly! They would pop out with a slight nudge even after we'd slammed it shut. We had to lock all our doors in case they would pop open during our drive!

What a rip-off piece of junk they're renting to tourists!

Sounds as though you've definitely decided to rent a car---but the railroad trip is beautiful. I could have done without the long stop at the gold mine (although it was the highlight of our young cousins' trip in our party of 17) but the scenery was truly breathtaking. It was a full day.

If you book with the railroad directly you can probably save about 20% on the cost. It would be worth $80 pp for this trip--you'll spend more renting the car.