North American Adventure or self indulgent behaviour?

May be it is the old Quaker genes finding an outlet, or maybe it is because since my earliest days I have had my  travel through Africa, Asia and Europe paid for me, but I have always felt hesitant about spending money on travelling purely for my own pleasure! Well, I have come to the conclusion that now is the time to break the habit of a lifetime, I have even got some dubious justifications to back me up...
  1. I have passed the half century...
  2. I am told that fifty is supposed to be the "new forty and strangely,
  3. I feel younger every year...
It is quite possible that before I know it I will have regressed to my teenage years, and further...  and that will mean that the children will be tending to my every need and clearing up after me... (please take note boys :-)) So, I needed to gather my courage and do something exciting before it happened!

As a result of this slightly peculiar train of thought I came up with a plan to cross the N American continent from West to East. 

As those who know me well will testify I am not renowned for forward planning and, although I have been mulling over options of routes and destinations for nine months or so, it was not until three weeks ago that I started to get serious and look at time tables for boats, buses, planes and trains. However to my, and I am sure many other's, suprise the plan has started to come together, bookings have been made, and paid for, and thanks to the amazing hospitality of cousins in AK I am joining in two weeks of their wilderness adventure.

N.A.A. Part I  Vancouver to the Arctic and back - map and itinerary.
  1. London - Vancouver - Air Transat (17th July).
  2. Vancouver - Port Hardy - BC Ferry and Greyhound bus.
  3. Port Hardy - Prince Rupert - up the 'inside passage' on a BC Ferry (21st July).
  4. Prince Rupert - Juneau - Alaska Marine Highway System - stopping briefly at Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg 23-24th July).
  5. Juneau - Anchorage AlaskaAirlines touching down at Yakutat and Cordova (29th July).
  6. Juneau - Denali National Park - car (2nd Aug)
  7. Denali - Cold Foot via Fairbanks - car
  8. Cold Foot - Bettles - little plane! (7th Aug)
  9. Bettles - Hunt Fork?  float plane (Landing on Hunt Fork Lake) to John River in the Brooks Range
  10. Hunt Fork - Bettles - 6 days to do 120 miles through Arctic wilderness
  11. Bettles - Cold Foot -little plane?
  12. Cold Foot - Fairbanks - Anchorage - car (13-14th Aug)
  13. Ancorage - Seattle - Vancouver - AlaskaAirlines (15th August)
End of Part I - Details of Part II, Vancouver to Calgary, to follow in the next posting

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