Why We Are Going to Alaska

Dave

About 30 years ago my employer forced me to go to a week-long Steven Covey immersion event to help me become a "highly effective person". Mr. Covey wrote a very popular book on this subject and created the Franklin Day Planner so you could purposefully manage your life on an hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly basis by writing everything down. According to Mr. Covey, you must have long term goals to become a highly effective person. At that point in my life, long-term goal setting was not something that I had ever even thought about.

One morning we were told that we had to submit our long-term goals in writing to the "teacher" before we could go out and play, just like a bunch of first-graders. I didn’t want to miss my tee-time, which I viewed as a far more important activity, so I quickly wrote down some long-term goals which were not necessarily well thought out, but seemed to have merit. As the years went by this whole exercise had become kind of a long-running joke, but the goals were actually being accomplished (so maybe the exercise did have merit!?!) Finally, the only two left were "drive to Alaska" and "learn to play the piano".

My original plan for driving to Alaska was literally to hop in my car and drive to Alaska, take a few pictures, hug a few bears, and drive back home. After many years of listening to me talk and laugh about this, Russ promised that he would join me when we both retired.

I am now going to drive to Alaska. Thanks Steven Covey for making me a highly effective person. It worked just like you said it would.

Russ

Dave and I have been friends about 50 years. I am joining in on Dave’s drive to Alaska adventure because I don’t want him to have fun without me.

I promised Dave that I would join him on his “drive up to Alaska” with really no idea of what was involved with this commitment. When Dave retired, we set a date 5 years out and started telling everyone of this great adventure we are going to take. Two years ago, we set the date that we would travel July 2019. On one of our fishing trips we spent the entire evening with a bottle of Makers Mark and four Alaska road maps. We quickly realized that Alaska is a huge state that is going to require more than a couple of weeks to explore. Three weeks, turned into four, four turned into five, five turned into six weeks. I’m not sure even six weeks will be enough time.

Next, we had to figure out accommodations. Hotels were out. Tent camping was not going to work (too old, too many bears). This left us with the need of either a motor home or a travel trailer. Motor homes are too expensive, so we set out to buy a travel trailer. Dave found a killer clearance deal on a brand new 28’ Jayco trailer last summer. We pooled our money and purchased the trailer. The trailer is officially called “The Lodge”.

We’ve plotted our plan and look forward to having some type of adventure activity every day. I’m really looking forward our adventure North to Alaska!Read more