Alaska 2023: About us and this trip

Who: Ma and Pa Billy Goat, Tween Kid, and Adult Kid

We’ll be starting off with just Ma, Pa & Tween Kid (turning 12 in June). Adult Kid will be working on campus during June and July and then joining us for August before going to Scotland for a semester abroad.

 

What: Travel Southeast Alaska by ferry, then Yukon Territory, Arctic Ocean & Alaska

The trip will be made up of a few stages.

The first stage is driving from Tucson to Bellingham WA to catch the ferry to Southeast Alaska.

Then we’ll spend a month visiting Sitka, Ketchikan, Prince of Wales Island, Juneau and Skagway via ferry.

In Skagway we will start the “Arctic Dash”: driving to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, CA on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. This part will be, as they say, “miles and miles of miles and miles” and it will be almost completely in wilderness, and most of it on gravel roads. The only city along the way will be Whitehorse, Yukon (Pop 25,000), and the only towns will be Dawson City, Yukon (Pop 1,375), Inuvik, Northwest Territories (Pop 3,243) and Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territory (Pop 898).

The next stage of the trip will be traveling around Alaska for August and part of September, with stays in Cordova, Wasilla, Valdez, Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island, Palmer and Denali.

The final stage will be driving back to the lower 48 and ultimately to Tucson.

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2014-2015: About us and the Big Trip

 Who: Ma and Pa Billy Goat, the Kids, and the Pets

 

 

What: Travel around North America for fourteen eighteen months in our RV

The plan for the”Big Trip” is to live on the road for fourteen eighteen months in Billy Goat, our 2001 Jayco Eagle Class C Motorhome.

Where: From Alaska to the Florida Keys

In the summer of 2014 we are going to make a beeline for Alaska and spend all summer exploring it.  When it gets cold up there we are going to drop down, probably along the Rockies (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico) trying to stay ahead of truly wintry weather.  Once we hit the southern border, probably at Big Bend National Park in Texas, we will work our way along the Gulf Coast, getting to Florida in December/January.  We already have campground reservations in the Florida Keys for February 2015.  In the spring of 2015 we will slowly follow the nice weather north along the East Coast, eventually ending up in Canada by early summer.  We haven’t planned where to go for the summer of 2015, but probably head west across Canada and/or the northern states of the US, and then explore the Rockies and/or the Pacific Northwest, before returning home in December 2015just in time for Big Kid to start sixth grade.

Why: Hmmm….

Why go on a trip like this? There is no one single reason, and digging into all the reasons would take a lot of time. Short version: Doing something like this has always been a goal of both Ma and Pa Billy Goat, and over the past few years various things have fallen into place that made it possible.

Ma says …. why not?!  Also,  it is time to bust out of suburbia for a bit ….

When: June 1, 2014 to December 2015

We will be departing Tucson on June 1, 2014 (Ma and Pa’s 13th wedding  anniversary) and returning home December 2015.