Saturday, July 11, 2015

Trip of a Lifetime!

Blue pool on the Root Glacier - Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, AK

Joel and I recently completed a 7-week, 12,360-mile road trip that took us through 12 US states (including Alaska!) and three Canadian provinces. During our travels, we visited 11 national parks, two provincial parks, a few state parks – and saw a whole lot of beautiful country in between! In fact, some of the most spectacular scenery wasn’t even designated as such in any way and I’ll be highlighting those little-known gems in future posts.

Glacier on the way to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK

This trip has been in the works at least 15 years. In fact, we wore out the Jeep Grand Cherokee we bought in 2001 specifically for our car-camping drive to Alaska and replaced it with a Subaru Outback in 2012. Our plan from the beginning was to sleep in our car so an SUV/wagon type was the only way to go.

Somewhere in the Yukon after our first car-sleeping night

Sleeping in our car was a huge success and I’d recommend it to just about anyone but we did learn a few things along the way that I plan to share here on The Best 50 Years. So if you want to do a road trip a cheap and easy way, stay tuned!

See? I survived the first night of sleeping in the car just fine!

2 comments:

  1. Crystal, I'm so glad you're sharing your adventures. The trip sounds awesome!

    My hubby would never consider making such a trip without hotel reservations. I, on the other hand, would love to do just what you guys did. Can't wait to read all about it.

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    1. Before this trip, I agreed with your hubby, Felicia. In fact, I had made several reservations and had researched other places I thought we might end up so I could easily select a motel at the last minute. I was so NOT looking forward to sleeping in the car but knew it would be necessary part of the time. Well, I'm a convert now! And I would have never believed it based on a couple car-sleeping experiences in years past. A comfortable bed and some organization is what made it so doable and I'll share more about all that soon.

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