Marsha, you've made it possible for me to do extensive planning for our 3-month trip to Alaska (from the Denver area) next summer...along with all the info from Sarge's travel posts. And I do love the planning! I love to read every book I can find, including novels, about the places I'm going to. It's great having names of good (and bad) restaurants and cafes along the way. Makes everything more fun. I've already read the non-fiction story, "Tisha" a very good read...also short...about a teacher who volunteered to go to the Alaskan wilderness and teach school in the 1920s or so. Very good. And really interesting history. My DH and I are both reading Michener's "Alaska". Also wonderful reading. Another short paperback is "Two Old Women" based on native lore...I think Athabascan. Also very good reading. We just found a rousing tale of the Gold Rush days at a used book store..."The Klondike Fever" by Pierre Berton. Non-fiction. Reads like a novel.
I've already made all of our ferry reservations. What we're going to do, having spoken with friends who took their RV to Alaska in 2010, and after reading all of your wonderful posts, is this: We'll drive all the way up, thru the Yukon etc., and go to Valdez along the way out towards Anchorage, Hope, Talkeetna, Kenai, etc. Definitely want to go across the Denali Hwy from Paxson to Cantwell. We're undecided about whether to go to Denali and take the painfully long bus ride in/out. Adds an awful lot of distance and time...and we really want extra days in Anchorage and down on the Kenai peninsula, especially at Homer.
After getting to and being in the southwest of Alaska, we figure we might be getting a bit tired of so much driving. So, we're going to drive to Whittier, and take the long ferry trip (almost 2 days) across to Juneau. Then we'll ferry-hop to Haines and Skagway and spend some days in each place, as well as fly from Juneau to Gustavus for a couple of days (sans RV) at the Gustavus Inn for our 44th wedding anniversary. After we get back to Juneau, we'll ferry to Sitka for 3 nights. Then ferry to Wrangell for a couple of days. Then ferry to Ketchikan for a couple of days. Then ferry from Ketchikan to Prince Rupert BC. Don't need much time there, so the next day we'll ferry again to Port Hardy at the northern end of Vancouver Island, and spend a week driving south on the island to Victoria, where we'll ferry for the last time to Port Angeles WA.
We're getting incredibly excited. As I say, I just adore doing the planning part of trips, and putting together my "notebook" on each place we're planning to go through, and to stay. We're really trying to plan for at least 3-5 days of down-time in 1 place every 5-7 days or so of travel, so that we don't miss things or get too exhausted just from driving. And once we start the ferry trips, each time we arrive at a destination, we'll have the Rollin Home to use for exploring...each town for at least 2 nights and usually 3 nights.
Anybody have any thoughts? Suggestions? I'm going to post this as a "new thread" also, in this same section of trip reports, journals and logs...throughout our trip starting next May 28, I'll do daily posts about how things are going.
Almost every campground, even the ones out in the boonies, had WiFi of some sort.
