Two Weeks Out

It's hard to believe that in two weeks, Alicia and I will celebrate our 1st anniversary together and embark on another summer-long road trip together, driving all the way to Alaska and back. This trip has been in the making since January of 2013 when one Saturday afternoon we decided, what the hell, we'll drive to Alaska next summer. The first road trip was such an amazing success and it still lingers in my thoughts on a near daily basis. It doesn't hurt to have taken pictures, posters, maps, postcards, etc from that trip and covered an entire wall of our living room.

Last summer, we had an incredible time in Costa Rica and Panama, but while there, we both made the comment that we missed being on the road. We missed having our own vehicle and leaving when we wanted to. We missed sleeping outside, watching the landscape change, and seeing mountains larger and more grandiose than I could've ever imagined. Another year has passed and we're counting down the days.

It was a little harder to build excitement leading up to the trip this time around. The winter weather threatened to put a kink in our plans, and it wasn't until recently that we worked everything out, but we're managing to leave when we intended to. Who needs teacher work days at the end of the year any way? And come on, three and a half weeks before departure my car gets totaled. Fortunately, I wasn't injured and fortunately it happened far enough out that I was able to jump through the insurance hoops and get another vehicle in time. Plus it's three years younger and has 63,000 less miles on it!

The plan is to head west, visit Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Washington before driving through British Columbia and catching a ferry through the Inside Passage of Alaska's southeastern peninsula. From there we drive through the Yukon Territory. That should take around three weeks. We'll spend two weeks in Alaska, visiting three National Parks and taking a tour up to the Arctic Circle. After that we'll use another three weeks to visit the Canadian Rockies before entering the US again through Montana. We head back to NC through North Dakota the Great Lake states, and down through Virginia. In all, well be gone for 8 weeks, from June 15th until August 9th. We expect to put at least 15,000 miles on the vehicle. We'll be visiting about 15 US National Parks and around 8 or so in Canada. I'll have visited 43 out of 50 states (Hawaii and all of New England will be left) when all is said and done.

Here's to hoping the last two weeks of school go quickly and smoothly.