Alaska 2011: May 2-3 - The Adventure Begins

This is the start of our 2011 Alaska trip.

Off Like a Herd of Turtles...

We are estimating this trip will put 10,000 to 12,000 miles on the motorhome, and a few thousand more for side trips in the car. But we are not going to let gas prices deter us.

That was how I started my first tweet of the trip. We were up bright and early, but it usually takes us a while to get out and get going the first day. There are always a bazillion things to wrap up before leaving the house for a period of time. So it was late morning before we were really on the road.

I don't expect too much excitement the first few days. We have a lot of miles to cover, and we don't want to get distracted by things that are close to home. Even though we expect the trip to last all summer, I'd hate to run out of time and miss something in Alaska because we used up too much time getting there. As we get farther from home, we will no doubt start spending more time on distractions.

Approximate Itinerary

We are going to take a bit of a zig-zag path across the plains. Basically, you have 3 or 4 east-west roads to choose from and 3 or 4 north-south roads. At this point, we plan to go I-74 to I-80 to I-29 to I-94 to US85 to US2 to I-15.

Did you know that you cannot drive to Juneau? You can take a marine ferry up and down the coast, but there are no roads that go there.

We will cross into Canada from I-15. From there, we will head across Alberta and into British Columbia to Dawson Creek, where the Alaska Highway begins. We follow the Alaska Highway across British Columbia and and Yukon Territory to Alaska.

Once in Alaska, we have a whole list of places to see, and not too much of a plan for getting to them. There are only a few major highways, so all we really need to do is decide what sequence we want to see things. We also haven't decided what way to go for the return trip. It will depend on how much time we have left before winter sets in, but our preference would be to take a different route across Canada than we did on the way up.

But of course none of this is etched in stone. More like scratched in jello. And the farther out in time, the softer the jello is.

Getting Started

Monday we made it to I-80 and into Iowa. We made the obligatory stop at the Iowa 80 truck stop (self-proclaimed as the world's largest truck stop). We had been there before, but it's kind of like Wall Drug - if you go by it, you just HAVE to stop. We spent Monday night at the Amana Colony RV Park. Looks like some interesting things to see around here, but this is much too close to home to spend time on this trip. We will just add it to the bucket list for another day.

Tuesday we continued West on I-80, then North on I-29. Stopped at Des Moines for a photo of the capitol and a geocache, but didn't really do much of anything on this leg of the trip.

We stopped at Blue Ox, in Pender, NE, which is where the hitch for pulling the car comes from. We had ordered a rock shield accessory, and it was missing some parts. There was not time for them to ship the parts to us before we left, so we decided to stop and pick up the missing pieces on the way by. They have a nice campground by the factory, where you can stay for free if you are getting work done.

To be continued...

I'm still a few days behind on the trip journal, but I expect that to be normal. Check for Twitter updates to see where we really are at any given point in time.