Counting Down to D-Day

While the exact departure day for our Alaska trip is not set in bronze, we’re tentatively shooting for July 8 or 9, the Friday or Saturday after the Fourth of July. That will let the holiday crowds thin down a bit, and will put us at the Canadian border early the following week. The Tiger Rally at Woodland Park last weekend was the shakedown cruise to make sure all systems were working, which they were. We spent the last couple of days cleaning up the Tiger and making some last minute mods – nothing big, just a couple of minor things we’ve been thinking about doing. However, hard rains Sunday night revealed that the crank-up vent in the bathroom is still leaking. I replaced the weatherstripping and re-sealed the pop rivets that attach the crank mechanism to the plastic cover a few weeks ago, but it’s still leaking – perhaps only when the wind blows from a certain direction. Oh well, it’s a wet bath, so any water that drips in there just goes down the floor drain.

We don’t have a firm agenda for the trip; we just plan to take it one day at a time and stop here and there along the way as our whims take us. Our general itinerary is the more-or-less standard “eastern” route up through Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta to the official start of the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek, British Columbia. From there it’s up through northern BC and southwestern Yukon Territory into Alaska, making a loop through Fairbanks, Denali, Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula, and then back up to the Alaska Highway at Tok. After crossing back into Canada we may take a side jaunt down to Haines and catch the ferry to Juneau for a couple days, then back up through Skagway. From there we’ll take the Cassiar Highway back down through northwestern BC, then cut over to Jasper and down to Banff on the Icefields Parkway, stopping at Watertown and Glacier National Parks, then home, perhaps through eastern Idaho and northeastern Utah.

As time (and wi-fi availability) permit, we’ll try to update the blog and post a few photos every few days along the way. Stay tuned.