North First? Or South?

We'll begin our 10-week Alaska road trip by leaving Anchorage on 19 May. Easy decision ... that's when we have to check out of the "Charming Cottage" we booked in the city while we wait for the RV & toad to catch up to us.

The question then was which direction to go first. North or south?

Our instinct was to go south and then make our way north. After a brief discussion, however, we reversed course. Why? We spent time in Seward in 2010, so we figure it will be a good place this time to relax for a bit at the end of our roadtrip.

The plan now is to head north from Anchorage ... perhaps jiggle west a bit to catch some of the central roads on our way to Denali National Park. From Denali, we'll head as far north as we can before beginning the southbound trek.

When I say we'll drive as far north as we can, we're excluding the Dalton Highway from that consideration. We traveled the Haul Road all the way to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and the Arctic Ocean in 2001 ... a two-day trip with one overnight in Coldfoot and another one in Deadhorse .... with someone else doing the driving. We don't intend to punish our vehicles by doing the drive ourselves.

Is this plan carved in stone? Sort of. Not really. We have a few reservations made to cover us during the two federal holidays that fall within our road trip ... Memorial Day and the 4th of July. But we can change those reservations if, for some reason, we decide to really jiggle our plans.

Now that we have the barebones of our trip in place, it's time to get serious about researching what we want to see and do. Methinks there is a lot of reading in my immediate future.Read more