Mostly musings, no real categorization
We’ve talked about how a life on the road includes all the things that life usually does anywhere else. Well, another one of those things came up. We were over the Sierras and most of the way through Nevada when we got word that Sue’s parents were having some issues with her father’s care in Florida. Clearly the best way to help out was to be there.
Continue reading “The Destinator? (temporarily…)”
We’ve crossed the border into the interior of Alaska! We left Haines, re-entered Canada, then came back into Alaska (see photo) southeast of Tok, where we’ve still got a short way to go to the end of the Alaska Highway, then we’ll be poking around up here for awhile.
We’ll keep posting updates when we can get onto the internet.
When people think of Alaska, a lot of us think first of the Interior – that huge landmass that includes Fairbanks and Denali, just south of the polar bears. There’s also southeastern Alaska, also called the Inland Waterway or the Inside Passage or the Alaska panhandle. It’s a bunch of beautiful islands and peninsulas, featuring rain forests in close proximity to glaciated mountains. Our friend Gail who previously lived in Haines loved it and recommended a visit.
Fascinating and beautiful it is, but travel in southeast Alaska is primarily via the Alaska Marine Highway (aka ferries), cruise boats, and airplanes. It’s tough to visit southeast Alaska driving an RV! There are but two roads, for a total of 246 paved miles. One connects Whitehorse (which we’d just departed en route to Haines Junction, YT) with Skagway, AK, 100 miles to the south. The other 146 miles make up the Haines Highway which connects Haines Junction, YT (where we just happened to be) with Haines AK.
Continue reading “Side trip to Alaska!”
Our preferred approach to our travels is to let a trip unfold, giving ourselves opportunities to poke around to see stuff, meet people and enjoy adventures. Typically, we pick a concept (this year it’s Alaska) and we average about 50 miles per day. No, we don’t turn off the engine after 50 miles. Rather, we’ll drive 2-3 hours, find a fun place to stop, and stay and explore for a couple or a few days. Or more, or less. It depends.
Since our chosen route to Alaska is over 4,000 miles long, we need to sped some time re-positioning. In RV-speak, this means we pick up the pace to get somewhere, then we can slow down. At a 50-mile-per-day average, our approach would take 5 months which would leave not much time left to explore, well, Alaska.
Continue reading “The Sprint, part 1 – What’s different”
It’s ski season at Sugarbush for a few more days. Yet the grass is green, the RV is packed and we’re off on this year’s adventure, Alaska bound. Westward ho!
Yup, we’ve decided to head to Alaska for this year’s adventure. The concept is:
We’re back in Warren and our 2018 RV adventure is now in the rear view mirror.
It’s nice to be home and we’re really looking forward to settling in and seeing our local friends again. We have amazing, fond memories of this trip and we are definitely going to miss being on the road – already do… Hey, it’s almost ski season! Let it snow!
The robot voice of GoogleMaps announced ‘Welcome to the United States of America.’ The customs agent at the border joked about our cross-border declaration of three T-shirts from Yellowknife, and waved us through. With that, our 4-month tour of Canada was at an end. With the border still in sight in the rearview mirrors, we felt the first twinges of nostalgia. We LOVED our time in Canada – all of it!
Living in an RV 6 months at a time is different from taking a vacation in an RV. It’s not just that life goes on while we’re on the road, our life is on the road! Several times in a 6-month trip, we need to pull in for some major provisioning. Our RV needs maintenance, the pantry is bare, the fridge is empty, the freezer is getting thin and we need a few special items. One such recent stop for us was in Edmonton, AB.
We love Northwest Territories and have thoroughly enjoyed our travels here, and we hope that sentiment has come through in our 3 prior posts. In those, we’ve included observations and thoughts about diversity, friendly people, great music, interesting small towns, and a unique city. This post includes a few more of our thoughts about the Northwest Territories and a few noteworthy things that didn’t make it into any of the other three. We did a post kind of like a year ago in Utah that we called “the space between.” This is in that same spirit.
To start with, as it says on their license plate – the only one in the world shaped like a polar bear – Northwest Territories is spectacular!