Helpful Resources:
“The Milepost” Alaska Highway Guide: http://amzn.to/24UWTbk
Two-Way Radios: http://amzn.to/1YvWOuw
Alaska looms large. It’s the ultimate adventure for any RV traveler. Take a casual glance at any proper map of North America. There it lies, residing atop the whole shebang, taunting you… Sometimes floating aloft from the rest of the map like the moon. And at times it seems as far away as a lunar landscape.
The day we decided to take our Airstream to Alaska, I dutifully plugged the itinerary into our GPS. The device crashed. Sadly, its aging microprocessor was too feeble to calculate the route.
Eventually we discovered the trip to the Alaska/Yukon border would take 5000 miles. We drove around inside the 49th state for another 4000 miles. And then we drove home, touching base after putting a total of 14,000 on our Ford F250 odometer.
The trip was not only long, it was expensive. The summer we made the journey, fuel prices were high. In Canada at times we were paying more than seven dollars a gallon.
And everything in Alaska is more expensive. Even products you’d think would be cheap were expensive. For example, they catch halibut by the ton in Alaska. As a local product, it should be relatively cheap, right? No. Dining out is expensive, no matter the cuisine of choice (and ‘cheap halibut’ is apparently an oxymoron).
Rest assured, we had our issues. No trip of this magnitude is going to always go smoothly. Our air-conditioner failed immediately upon our departure. Then we blew a tire. We busted open our fresh water tank in the Yukon Territory. Oh, and eventually our truck engine failed completely.
[pullquote]Rest assured, we had our issues. No trip of this magnitude is going to always go smoothly.[/pullquote]
So, was it all worth it?
Are you kidding? Alaska was undoubtedly the best Airstream trip we have ever taken.
We saw wild wolves, bears, eagles, and orcas. We watched glaciers “calve” (as huge chunks of ice fell into the sea) and later enjoyed chips of that ice in our cold beverages.
In this special video series, our goal is to tell you about our trip in a way that helps you make the same trip someday. Don’t be afraid. It is doable, and it is a blast. You can learn from our good choices, and also from our mistakes (and we made plenty).
You only live once. If you are serious about seeing our country, you need to see Alaska. There’s no better way to see it than to take your rig there. Alaska is worth it.