Five Months and Counting

Here it is with only a little over five months until our actual travel starts, although we can say that our adventure actually started close to two years ago when we started planning this trip.

The majority of the reservations have been made. The few outstanding reservations for within the Alaska and British Columbia area are pending because the places (hotels, tours) are not taking reservations for 2010 yet.

In addition, the return travel from Skagway back through Banff & Jasper has only partially been completed. The road route is done. I have not yet made any hotel reservations for this stretch as we may be modifying our tentative plans on where we may stay and / or stop to see. For example, we currently have the Theodore Roosevelt Ranch in North Dakota on our list to stop at. If we are getting tired from all the travel we may decide to skip this park. The routing has been finalized, although some minor changes can still be made, especially in light of potential changes to what we visit / do not visit.


signed:
The Wayward Traveler

Majority of Reservations Made

After all the discussions and planning, our Alaska Adventure is now becoming real. Between Thursday and Friday, Oct. 15 & 16, 2009, the majority of the motel and ferry reservations have been made as well as some of the tours. Although most of the motel reservations were made with a credit card guarantee, several motels, the Alaska Marine Highway System and several of the boat cruise / tours required payment when the reservations were made. There are a few which cannot be made until mid-January 2010.

Of course the reservations I am describing above are only for Vancouver, north through Alaska, and the return travel back through the Yukon and Skagway. This will be about 35 days of our travels. I am responsible for the needed reservations for our trip from home to Vancouver, and from Skagway to home. The trip from home to Vancouver is scheduled for 5 days (we may add an extra day before we leave the USA). The trip from Skagway, through the Canadian Rockies (Banff, Jasper), and back home is currently estimated at 14 days, with a few days in the Canadian Rockies already included. The reservations that I need to make can wait until next April or so.

Reservations Finally Started

Our Alaska trip has now entered Phase II. As a reminder Phase I was putting together an initial route containing towns and places we wanted to see and which cruises and tours we wanted to take.

Our travel agent started making reservations today, Monday, October 05, 2009. The delay was that the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) did not publish it's 2010 schedule until late last week. There will be a few minor changes to what we worked on with our travel agent, mainly because of the ferry schedules. As for a few towns, such as Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage, we will be staying a few days each, and have not set specific tours. We feel that we will be able to arrange local tours when we get there.

Stay tuned. As reservations are made I will post updates here, with a summary of what reservations were made. Of course, these postings will not be in complete detail, but with enough that you will be able to follow our travels.

Reservations starting to be made

On Tuesday, 07/28/2009, Judy and I traveled to Traverse City to meet with our travel agent Alana. We reviewed with her our requested changes to her initial itinerary that she made from our February meeting. we also gave her some guidelines as to when the four of us will share a room as when we want separate room - pretty much based upon a cost of $140 / night or higher then we will share a room.

We also gave her some towns which we wanted to remove from our itinerary, such as Sitka and Valdeze, and some towns that we wanted added, such as Palmer. Also removed were some flight-seeing tours, with the option of adding some later. We also added a few days in each of the major towns, Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.

One question ferry schedule was cleared up - the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert was listed as only a 3 hour trip on her initial itinerary, and we were to take the 5:00 a.m. ferry the following morning. I found that it was really a 15 hour trip arriving at about 10:30 p.m. in Prince Rupert. We requested at lease one full day in Prince Rupert as we did not want to get in late and leave early.

The ferry schedule will not be available until around October so the dates for the Inside passage are still not firm. A few extra days in Juneau will be built in for now to allow for a day or two change in the ferry schedule from last years schedule.

Alana will start the intial motel reservations for the mainland shortly.

Stay tuned.

Initial Set up

This blog has been set up for us to post our adventures and daily activities on our road trip from home, across the upper United States, then through Vancouver, Victoria and Vancouver Island, on through the Inside Passage to the Alaska mainland. From here we will travel throughout the main areas of Alaska, then travel back through the Yukon Territories, British Columbia and Alberta, sightseeing of the Canadian Rockies as we drive past them, then into Glacier National Park and returning to our homes.

As Our Alaska Travels itinerary is firmed up we will post it here so you can follow our progress. We expect to be able to update this blog most days, and even include some photographs that we think will be of interest.