The Great Alaskan Road Trip: About The Plan

In the past few months we have dropped a hefty chunk of change in the Amazon Travel section.

We’ve also done tons of internet research.  I spent weeks combing the forums of Trip Advisor for advice on where all the good campgrounds are, what attractions to see on the way, and whether we are more likely to need mosquito spray (answer: definitely) than bear spray (hopefully not, but we’ll pack it just in case).

We are excited to get to Alaska, since neither of us has ever been before.  But we aren’t in a huge hurry to get there.  We are just as excited to see all the amazing parks and scenery that the U.S. and Canada have to offer.  Since I am a passport-carrying National Park geek, I tried to plot a route that would take us to as many national parks as possible along the way.

It’s an ambitious plan, I’ll admit – almost 9,000 miles round trip.  We’ll find out if we are able to live in cramped quarters for months without going a little crazy.  Some of the highlights include:

• Petrified Forest, AZ
• Canyon de Chelly, AZ
• Monument Valley, UT (we should see the solar eclipse while there)
• Canyonlands National Park, UT
• Arches National Park, UT
• Grand Teton National Park, WY
• Yellowstone National Park, WY/MT
• Glacier National Park, MT
• Banff National Park, Alberta
• Jasper National Park, Alberta
• Yellowhead Highway, British Columbia
• Alaska Marine Highway to Juneau (2 days by ferry up the Inside Passage)
• Denali National Park
• Klondike Loop, Yukon Territory
• Olympic National Park, WA
• Pacific Coast, WA & OR
• Napa/Sonoma & Central Coast Wine Country, CA

We haven’t made a bunch of campsite reservations or anything because we want to keep our plans flexible.  Also, we are hoping to find some free campsites on BLM land, which usually don’t take reservations anyway.  Of course not making reservations is risky -- I have heard that most decent campgrounds fill up fast during the summer.  But we’ll take our chances since we don’t want to force ourselves to stick to too much of a schedule.  Besides, if the “no reservations” strategy doesn’t work out, there’s always the Walmart parking lot option (they let you camp for free.  Not a very scenic place to camp, but we would get front-row seats to the People of Walmart show).

Throughout our trip, we plan to keep the blog updated with photos, videos, and commentary.  If you like you can enter your email address above in the box labeled “Receive updates by email” to be notified when there’s a new post.

To give you guys an idea of the route, I plotted some of our destinations in Google Maps: 

View Larger Map

Our route back through Washington, Oregon, and California isn’t completely ironed out yet.  Do you have suggestions on where we should visit and what we should see?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!