Our trip to Alaska and back was 10,483.4 miles. At the turning around point in Anchorage, we
had gone 5301 miles. From Anchorage
home, it was 5182.4 miles. In all those
miles, we did not see a single wreck. That
could have only been through God's protection. The only evidence of the drive on the car is
the bugs on the front of the dirty, dirty car and a chip in the passenger side
of the windshield. That chip got there
before we got to Canada when a pick-up truck coming toward us threw a rock. We did have to have the oil changed and tires
rotated during the trip. The people at a
dealership in Kearney, NE were very accommodating to work us in. They even gave us a coupon for a free car
wash which we used. You really couldn’t
tell the car had been washed but we knew it.
We filled the thirsty gas tank 36 times. Sometimes it was just a top-off before
leaving a city/town with any distance between towns. The most expensive gas, US equivalent to $5.76/gallon,
was in Ft. Nelson, BC on August 5. The least
expensive was $3.14 in Columbia, MO on August 26. The prices in Alaska varied, depending on
where we were. We paid $4.12 in
Fairbanks, $4.35 near Denali, and $3.82 in Anchorage. We used 456.98 gallons of gas. The average price/gallon for the trip was
4.01. I have complained many times that
my Traverse does not get the sticker listed mpg. We discovered it likes the high thin air
because it got the best mileage ever on this trip. The best mileage was obtained around
Fairbanks; the worst in the first leg from home to White Pine, TN. Overall, it averaged 22.9 mpg which is better than the
18 it averages around home.
In Canada and Alaska, we thought the food was expensive;
however, the portions were large. We
learned to wait to order until we saw what was being delivered to tables near
us. An order of pork chops with
vegetables consisting of two large pork chops, two scoops of mashed potatoes,
and a soup bowl of mixed vegetables is two servings in my opinion. We shared most meals that were not sandwich
based. Most of the hotels we stayed in
had a complimentary breakfast. Most of
these were full, hot breakfasts. Only
one was a continental breakfast with pastries, coffee, tea, and juice
only. It is essential to have picnic
food available for the long distances between towns. The first day we were in this situation, all
we had were packs of nabs, apples, and water.
When we got to a place with a store, we took care of that. We ate a lot of ham and cheese
sandwiches. At the places we ate in
Canada and Alaska, if we asked about getting just a vegetable plate, the
waitress looked at us as if we had lost our minds. It is a meat and two vegetables with one of
the vegetables being some kind of potato.
We ate a lot of cod and salmon. Generally,
bread was not served with a meal except breakfast. With breakfast, bread choices were usually waffles,
hot from a waffle maker, English muffins, bagels, or toast. Once
we left the United States, we did not see biscuits until we were back in the
US.
Though the economy around here seems stagnant, somewhere it
must be doing well. In the United States,
on the interstates, we saw many, many tractor/trailers. We also saw many trains carrying double
stacked containers on many cars.
Anyone traveling in Montana, Nebraska, Canada, or Alaska
should carry toilet paper and hand sanitizer wipes with them. There are “rest areas” that have glorified
outhouses instead of flush toilets.
Because of the distance from town to town, it is not possible to avoid
using these outhouses. Believe me, if a
McDonald’s or a convenience store was available, we stopped but there are long
distances with nothing. Some of the
“rest areas” in the US provided big bags of hand sanitizer but the ones in
Canada did not. Thank goodness we had
carried packages of wipes.
We thoroughly enjoyed our Sirius XM radio when we had a
signal. Once we hit the Rocky Mountains,
the signal was gone. Then we were glad
we had our MP3 players with us until an XM signal was available again.
We did not like liters, kilometers, etc. And we did not like Canadian money. The Canadian bills look like they may be
monopoly money and the loonies ($1) and toonies ($2) are big and heavy when you
accumulate several. We bought Canadian
prepaid gift cards and used them for most purchases in Canada. The last two days we were in Canada, I’m sure
the merchants did not like us very much.
Imagine being asked to put $1.37 on one card, $48.53 on another, and
being given $26.30 in cash. We managed
to spend every cent of the three cards we had and all the paper money we
had. We are stuck with some change we
could not get rid of. We were thankful
our odometer and GPS could be switched to the metric system. That made driving much easier. I sincerely hope the US never goes to the
metric system.
We were in the following states at some point during the
trip: North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa,
and of course, Alaska. We were also in the Canadian provinces of British
Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon Territory.
We were in some states both going and coming. We went across the upper part of the state
and came home across the lower part of the state. We saw some beautiful sights but North Carolina
has the beautiful Smoky Mountains. We
enjoyed them on the drive home.
Having finished our trip and knowing what I now know, would
I still have done it? Absolutely,
YES! Would I do it a second time?
No. It is truly a ONCE in a lifetime
experience. I would not take anything
for having the opportunity to do the trip; but I wouldn’t repeat it. When Danny was complaining about one of the
long boring stretches we were driving through, I reminded him we could have
flown at least part of the way. His
response, “But think of all we would not have seen.”
