Travels have ended for now, we have landed in Flagler Beach, Florida where we are looking for a new home. We expect to restart in the Spring with new adventures. This is a summary (photos with a few words) and some fun statistics of our 2011 adventure..Enjoy ..
Best, John and Janice
The Walkabout Canada-Alaska portion of the trip (that is what the RoadTrek group called the trip) began on April 30, 2011 when we entered Canada at Vancouver Island and ended when we entered Montana on July 19, 2011..but..let’s start from the beginning of our adventure.
We left our home in Dade City, Florida on March 14, 2011. We traveled from Florida to Seattle seeing beautiful sites driving through the south, visiting in Arizona, then up through California, and Oregon, some extreme weather, then up to Washington State.
Once arriving in Seattle we left the RoadTrek at John’s brothers house and flew over to Hawaii and attended our nephew’s wedding in Hawaii.
Our house sold back in Dade City so we flew directly back from Hawaii packed our possessions and put them into PODS for storage, flew back to Seattle to begin the adventure. We traveled 11, 800 miles on airplanes.
Through Canada BC, we made our way to meet our soon to be RoadTrek family in Dawson Creek
Into Alaska,
up to Denali National Forest,
back through the Yukon
and back to the lower 48 and finally Florida, we traveled in total 20, 260 miles on roads, and 950 miles on the Canada and Alaska Marine Highway (ferries).
We saw 15 black bears, one with 2 cubs,
and several brown bears (grizzly)
12 moose
caribou, elk, deer, buffalo, wild sheep, wild goats, big seals
eagles (called buzzards with tuxedo’s in Juneau there are so many of them)
and puffin
and many more birds.
We also saw a raft of Sea Otters, largest raft the captain of the boat ever saw
Last but not least, the pod of Orca whales.
We consumed about 60 bottles of wine and 10 liters of rum (we think!) We averaged 17.4 Miles per gallon which means we bought close to 1164 gallons of diesel which averaged about 4.30/gallon and spent about $5000 on fuel. We replaced the computer board from the hot water heater, replaced 2 tires and had our oil changed 2 times. During the entire trip we only spent 4 nights in hotel rooms, even when we visited our families we slept in our home away from home our RT.
Our continued travel back to Florida took us through the black hills, mount Rushmore, crazy horse, up through the Michigan UP, down to Traverse City, Michigan, over to Pittsburgh to Clinton New York and up to the Thousand Islands in New York state. We headed further into New England to Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire then we spent the hurricane in Cape Cod (being from Florida it was strange to be fighting a hurricane in the northeast), down through New Jersey, where we visited Janice’s cousin Kathy and her better half Eddy.
On to Delaware and out along the Chesapeake through Ocean City Maryland and Virginia Beach and Nags Head to arrive at Cape Hatteras. Unfortunately hurricane Irene wiped out Highway 12 eliminated the only way to get there other than ferry from the mainland. We stopped in Raleigh North Carolina for two days to visit with our granddaughter Izzy, son Courtney and his lovely wife Amanda.
We then took the highway to Flagler Beach, Florida where we have been looking for a new home. Currently we are waiting on a bid for a short sale four blocks from the ocean. It even has plenty of room for the Roadtrek.
One question that we constantly get, what was the most spectacular thing you saw. Needless to say it was all spectacular, but the one day in Alaska was taking the Adventure Bound 56 foot boat to Tracy Arm fjord and the Sawyer Glacier. The picture that we have used at the top of the blog is the Sawyer Glacier. The boat wound through the icebergs
to about 400 yards from the glacier. This is a view that you will not see from a cruise ship, as they cannot get into the glacier. It was beautiful beyond belief and the biggest thrill of the trip.
We will never forget our adventure and the wonderful people we met and of course Benny.
We look forward to 2012 and our next adventures..stay tuned!