Planning Your Trip to Alaska

Booktopia - The Milepost: Alaska Travel Planner, Kris Valencia, 9781892154262

Planning your trip to Alaska is made easy with "The Milepost" a unique publication that provides a 'mile by mile' account of every highway in Alaska, that is detailing every look out, every business enroute, quality of the bitumen (or not), each twist and turn is accounted for as well as a detailed account of each town from beginning to end.  This publication makes it very easy to gain a true insight to your possible travels, as it is updated every year.  They have a team of writers that scour the countryside for edits to their publication.  It's second to none.  It is a large publication, but worth the weight in your travel luggage.  Of course it's cost is offset by paid advertisements, but even they are welcome to the reader, as you gather information on tourist attractions, accommodation, and all those things to do on your travels.  It helps you plan how long you could/should stay in an area, and how long to drive a leg with all the lookouts and sight-seeing along the way.

That's how we started, we grabbed our old raggy copy from our previous trip, looked at what we did last time, and planned what we wanted to see that was new and what we wanted re-visit.  The Alaska Milepost also includes the Yukon Territories, so this publication will suffice for our expedition.

Journey's in Alaska seems to take on a challenge, of not wanting to travel the same road twice which can be an issue.  The Kenai Peninsular to the south of Anchorage with destinations of either Homer (a great destination) or Seward with Exit Glacier, means a one road in, one road out.  If visiting Denali National Park and maybe followed by a leg up to Fairbanks is in your sights, again, unless you then desire to head down to Valdez via Delta Junction (and possibly seeing the Bison Herds), it's a return trip along the same road.  So, for RV'ing, planning to cover the most ground, with the least miles is the challenge.

The other part of planning is whether you want to build in 'flying' or 'sailing' as a method of travel.  You can fly into remote Inuit Villages to see Polar Bears, fly to Katmai National Park to walk with Grizly Bears and of course, if the Alaskan Panhandle takes your fancy, then a flight to Juneau, Sitka or Ketchikan.  If you want to build in an 'Alaska Marine Highway' leg or two, this is a great way to explore the Alaskan Panhandle or simply link Wittier to Valdez, without the cruise ship crowds.  These Alaska Marine Highway Ferries are a fantastic way to explore the Alaskan coastal shores.  The Ferries take vehicles, including trucks and RV's and some have a Cinema and Bar / Restaurant onboard, cabins that sleep up to 4 or more, comfortable seating with great views and on some Ferries, backpackers can set their tent up on the top deck under a roof structure that has gas heating, unbelievable.

Google Earth, and GPS, what a paradigm shift in holiday planning.  Each Saturday and Sunday morning we spend going over planned legs of routes looking for Boondocking spots.  Boondocking is the term in North America for freedom camping, camping in public locations that don't cost anything.  From Shopping Centre carparks to the shores of wild rivers.

Google Earth affords us the opportunity to look down those side roads that you'd never drive down usually, and explore if there's a great spot to camp or explore.  We often find one or two RV's down these roads that lead to the shores of picturesque lakes, which confirms for us some sort of access.  We then put the GPS Coordinates of the turn off into our Tom Tom navigation device as a favourite and put in our own description.  Then sometimes we also put in the GPS Coordinates of the spot we suspected as being suitable, in case there are side tracks and the like.

So the independent traveler has a world of choices that cater for freedom, avoiding the crowds and avoiding being treated like cattle. Freedom to choose activities, freedom to choose which shops to use, freedom to spend your money. Many of the Cruise Ship Companies actually own the shops in the town they use as a port of call, for example, Skagway, and as such, take income out of the local community, and that's an ethical issue for us. As a further example, in Skagway, there is a lovely restaurant down on the pier, a family pizza restaurant in town, a pub or two and in the back of a electrical shop is a hotdog stand. That's it for eating.  Skagway has 4-5 Cruise Ships per day during the summer months, unloading some 20,000 tourists per day. Why isn't there a huge number of food outlets?, because they all get their meals on the boat, so locals won't make any money out of food.


Planning, that's where the real joy is for us, researching what's possible, reading up what's interesting, learning the culture, understanding what's possible, all the facets you don't get when you book an organised tour.  Being treated like cattle is not for us.

"Drawing on the last Trip", in the next Blog.