www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxyAv4trk_I&list=RDFxyAv4trk_I
Methinks, I'd like to visit there (Alaska) someday. Secretly, I wanted to be a cowboy too, but I'll probably just stick with engineering til the money runs out.
When my family goes on vacation, it's always a truck, a camper, too much gear, and lots of miles. Alaska sounded a long ways off, but an attainable goal, still. God left it there for enjoying. I just needed to get there.
I started stewing on such a trip. Google said it was nearly 4000 miles from my porch to Fairbanks, AK. So...... it'd take a week of driving to get there, then I'd have to change my oil upon arrival. Taking a 3 week vacation (long by anyone's standards) would mean a week getting there, a week of enjoyment (actual vacation) and then a very miserable week driving home. That's a horrible plan.
I realized that to really do this trip right, I'd need to burn far more than 3 weeks of my precious work PTO (paid time off) to make it a pleasant trip. I remember thinking.... "to do this right, it'd take a whole danged summer and you (me) can't do that".
but then I thought..... "why CAN'T you do that?" who sayeth thou shalt not enjoy long stretches of time, highway, salmon and friendship together? Where is that written? Exodus? Leviticus? I think not. It was just written in my mind, and in my habits. Good time to start rethinking this stuff. :)
our company had a layoff in 2008 and another in 2010. I didn't get let go, but it did effect me emotionally. I had to let 4 people go personally. Each of them came into work that day only to find out that we just didn't need them. We hadn't sold enough work to keep them busy. It was painful.
So I started thinking..... "what would have to be true for me to take off a whole summer?" I made a bullet list of things that would have to be true for me to take off a whole summer. The list is as follows:
- house must be paid off
- money to fund entire trip (I'm not going into debt to have a good time)
- SHTF money in the bank, in case I returned to find I had no job upon return
- willing to quit my job entirely if my company wouldn't allow the extended time off
I could deal with that. Could work deal with it? Probably.
So, I started talking to some close friends. Fools I thought might like such a trip. Better yet, fools foolish enough to join in the fray, suffering and good times. Each of them said "you're crazy, and hells yes I want to do that".
Next step was assessing readiness to meet the above conditions. I take a quarterly snapshot of our debts, assets, NW so I can track how we're trending as our own P&L (profit and loss) center. This would be a great indicator of when we'd be able to go. :)
Overall, our family has been very fortunate in all facets of life. Career wise - great. Kids are healthy and doing well. We work pretty diligently to "live within our means" and invest for our future. Our house is considerably under the average value for our hometown. Had we indulged every material urge, we'd be in debt up to our eyeballs like most of America is. We just don't buy much stuff, and the stuff we buy, we try to buy cheap (garage sales, thrift stores, craigslist, etc). Retail purchases aren't verboten, but they aren't the first line of defense, either.
Fortunately, my wife is pretty frugal, and I'm Scotch-Irish. Scots in particular are famously cheap. I got that gene, and maybe an extra. Still, we were MILES away from ready, financially. Early projections said we'd be financially "ready" when I was 72. I was 36 when the idea got hatched. No kidding. Time to seriously buckle down.
So our already cheap family got cheaper. When finances turned favorable (at all) we put that excess money down on the mortgage. We did this til it "hurt" and then a bit beyond. After 3 years of work at it (2012), our mortgage was gone. The house was not. :)
By 2016, we were ready to go, but our kids were still on the young side. This trip is as much for them as anybody. Its the trip of a lifetime, and I want them to enjoy all the trip has to offer. The kids have been an integral part of our planning and prepping. I wanted them to experience "saving" for something they wanted to do. It's a great life lesson. (wanting, not having, and saving to get, rather than borrowing). I know, hardly American at all..... but the system of waiting patiently has rarely failed us....
So we deferred the trip a year to 2017. Now our kids are in the 11-13 range. They are (or will be soon) making major life decisions. Decisions like.... who will my long term friends be? what will I do on Saturday nights? what will I drink? what will I smoke? and the dreaded "how far will I go?"
When I was in that phase of life, I made most of those decisions wrongly. My world was small and my mind was too. I want them to realize that the world is huge, opportunities are many, and it is they, not their world that is small. Selfishly, I wish the kids were old enough to drive on a trip like this, where I expect to drive nearly 5000 miles on the whole trip.....
Anyhoo, we decided 2017 was the year.
Next step was determining "how" to execute an Alaska trip of this sort. Several options had emerged:
- an "Alaska cruise" - easy option, and what most (smarter) people do - but not enough AK time for us.
- fly up, rent a camper and putt around til end of trip, fly home - the camper rental (commonly $150-$250/day) was a budget killer for us
- drive up the famed "ALCAN" highway and drive back - got killed because the crummiest part of any trip, the drive home would have taken a SOLID week. who wants to miss work so he can drive a truck and camper ~4000 miles? not this guy.
- drive up, enjoy ourselves, sell the camper, canoe, truck and donate everything we couldn't sell to goodwill?
We (purposefully) bought a 4wd Dodge diesel pickup (pulls trailers well), put a camper shell on it, added a canoe rack, and added a 31' bumper pull camper to the mix. None of it is in "glorious" condition, but Alaskans are pretty pragmatic. They'd rather have a scratched/beat up item that works well than a failure in great condition (or so I believe). All this stuff works. :)
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| Pickup, camper shell and canoe. |
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| the Alaska camper - home sweet not so home - for two months |
Other items that needed to be taken care of:
- reservations for ~56 nights of campsites (THANKS WIFE!!!)
- what to do with our 4 chickens? loan them to an old friend and his family!
- family golden retriever? Pawn him off on grandparents.
- house? what to do with the house? get a buddy from church to stay at our place to make sure all stays well while we're gone! Arm him well and tell him to eat everything in the freezer.
Okay, so here's our general travel route plan*:
* "no well laid battle plan survives the first bullet" - General Patton
- Depart TX early and drive to Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
- Grand Tetons NP, WY
- Yellowstone NP, WY
- Glacier NP, MT
- Banff, AB (yes, that's Alberta, Canada) - my buddies family will meet us here
- Prince Rupert, BC (British Columbia) - BC is awesome. we went in 2015 and it was just fantastic. Canadians are awesome people.
- take the AK Ferry to Petersburg, AK
- Ferry to Juneau, AK
- Ferry to Haines, AK
- two border crossings (through Yukon) on the way to Tok, AK
- Fairbanks, AK
- Denali NP, AK (staying in Talkeetna)
- Homer, AK
- Anchorage, AK - buddies family sells out and flys home
- Seward, AK
- Soldotna, AK
- Anchorage, AK
- fly home through Seattle back to TX
I realize that sounds like a lot, and I hope to God it will be. a lot of miles, a lot of diesel, a lot of camper setups, a lot of repairs, flat tires, trout, salmon, dolly varden, and we're doing it all for the halibut :) - Three Stooges reference......
It's gonna take a lot of cheap red wine and sunflower seeds to get through a trip like that, but I believe I'm good for it.
More updates to come. :)
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