Early-retirement wannabe

hugheskevi

tigerspill said:

Looks like an amazing trip (or trips).
I appreciate that you may not have completed your planning, but wondered if you would be able to share more detail of the places and what you plan to visit?

It should all be a single trip, unless there are deaths in the family meaning we have to return briefly to the UK (sounds rather macabre, but when away for 3 years, things are going to happen unfortuantely).

Planning for a trip lasting an unspecified amount of time, but several years has quite a few levels of detail. First, the main trip is simply "The Americas" - which will be mostly overland travel across the entire continent, from north to south. Then there are potential trips across Africa, south east Asia, Australia and New Zealand. We will take a view on these other trips after the Americas so beyond knowing roughly what the route across Africa would be and where in south-east Asia we would go, there won't be any more planning of those.

Even for the Americas, most of the trip will be planned whilst traveling rather than in advance. The framework of the trip will be about 18 months, as you want to be in Alaska in summer and at Tierra del Fuego also in summer, so 18 months is an ideal trip length to travel across the Continent.  However, this can be flexed by how much you zig-zag on the way down to see things, or even travel in a sort of U shape, going down the west coast and then back up the east.

So the planning as it stands is below, and as you can see there is much greater planning for the first part, then it gets increasingly uncertain. I expect most accommodation to be AirBnb, booked a few days in advance usually. Motels and hotel or even hostels will also be possibilities where appropriate. It might help to have Google Maps open to follow, as a lot of the places early on are not well known.

• Fly into Edmonton or Calgary, see Banff and Jasper National Parks
• Bus or train to Vancouver, see the area, then head down into Seattle, and from there fly to Juneau
• See Juneau area (including Mendenhall Glacier), Sitka, Haines and Skagway - probably flying out of Juneau to and from Sitka , then taking boats to Haines and Skagway
• Take several bus trips through Canada, looping around to Fairbanks, travelling quite leisurely with several overnight breaks in the small towns along the way.
• See Firewalkers Alaskan Malamute kennels - for the last 5 years we have walked and looked after a friend's Alaskan Malamute, so keen to see them in their natural habitat. I enjoy trying to theme holidays as much as possible around our interests, so for example we have done recent trips tracking wolves in Romania and going to see ospreys at their winter migration locations in The Gambia.
• Head up north to Prudhoe Bay (the traditional starting point of a Trans-America overland trip) - quite likely to do this with a tour company for ease as it doesn't seem a great idea to drive in that area, even in summer, but may take a bus if the summer bus is operating.
• Head back to Fairbanks, then on to Denali National Park, Talkeetna and Anchorage, and then fly back to Seattle.
  

That obviously isn't all overland, as we miss out a part between Vancouver and Juneau. The easiest way to cover that overland would be a 3 day ferry which costs many times the cost of a 3 hour flight. I've traveled enough overland across Africa and Asia that I don't feel I have anything to prove, so will take the flight for that part.

From Seattle the rough plan is below. We will travel slowly, and plan what other things to see along the way. There won't be any planned amount of time to spend at any place or speed at which we need to get there. Although on long overland trips you do need to be mindful of making progress else you never get to the final destination.

• Head south east to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park
• Go see Mount Rushmore
• Head to Boulder, Colorado
• See Antelope Canyon, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, General Sherman Tree, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco and Alcatraz, then head down to Los Angeles.
• Go on into Mexico, and see Copper Canyon on the El Chepe train, stopping at Creel - famous as the home of the Raramuri tribe who are first-class runners.

And from there, we will drift down through Mexico, into Belize, Guatemala, El Salavador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. I've traveled that region before and it is easy (certainly compared to rural Africa travel). I've made a shortlist of all the things I want to see in each country, and as the countries are so much smaller than the USA we will probably stick to a few locations in each country, staying at an AirBnb place for a week or two or three to see everything in region.

From Panama we will get a boat around the Darian Gap to Colombia. We then have a decision to make - we could (i) loop back north up through the Caribbean and up the east coast of USA and then fly back to see rest of South America, (2) zig-zag east and west down through South America or (iii) head south, sticking largely to the west coast of south America, then looping back north once we hit Tierra del Fuego to see the eastern areas of south America, up through the Caribbean and on up the east coast of USA. We will see how we feel, what we prefer and how long it has taken us when deciding which way to go.

To avoid travel fatigue the pace will be leisurely. If we find a nice place we will stay there a while doing very little, just relaxing for a few days - I expect this to be very common as we go through Central America in particular. We will take high spec laptops for TV, films and gaming, and set up scanning of UK post (not that I would expect any, but want it all be set up to be as convenient as possible) and have dual-SIM phones for a UK and local SIM combination, so we will be very well connected. We will keep up a lot of running training as we go, as travel destroys cardio fitness (I still have painful memories of a 27m:30s Parkrun after 3 months of travel, over 5 minutes slower than when I left - legs just wouldn't work properly!), and hopefully we can enter a few running races along the way for a bit of local fun too.

Hopefully friends will come up to visit us along the way, for example I hope some would be interested in coming out for a couple of weeks to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for a holiday, and we could share an AirBnb something like this, which is an amazing area and accommodation but not expensive at all. Or if friends wanted a short traveling trip, they could join us wherever interested them and we could travel together for a while. Or if they just wanted a break in the Caribbean we could try to join up, so lots of possibilities.

@hugheskevi maybe start a diary type thread - it looks like a great trip

When I did a few separate year-long overland trips across Africa and Asia and Australia in the past I didn't even take a camera But as this will almost certainly be the last huge trip I am thinking about doing the whole YouTube and Instagram thing along the way - I think it would be quite interesting to do, say, 2 videos a week along the way, primarily to have as a memento of the trip for the future. I do quite like having this thread as a reference too - documenting all the preparation in quite a lot of detail over the last decade.

I second this.  I do wonder how that might go though!

"I am not going to purchase any more bags of peanuts from this particular hotel as after counting the total nuts in the previous three bags I have determined that..." :  ) 

Hehe, I resolved not to discuss management of finances at a detailed low-level again, after all the trouble that kicked off on this thread back in late September 2018 (bottom of page 467, 25 Sep 2018 if anyone wants to look) - when I hurriedly made what I thought was a flippant, light-hearted post just as I left work. Turned out it really wasn't interpreted in that way though! (which in hindsight I can see why, I was writing it as I might tell a story in the pub, but inflections and emphasis don't come across well in writing).

bluenose1

wow, @hugheskevi sounds an amazing trip.
Not sure if you listen to podcasts but there  is a travel podcast I listen to (I can dream) called Zero to Travel. They discuss unusual holidays with people who holiday all around the world. He did one on 4th May with someone who had visited all the National Parks. 

Though looking at your plans you seem to have really thought it out well. Looks fab, I have no chance of a trip like that, just about persuaded my husband that a 3 week holiday isn’t too long….

Haha, just read the link you refer to again. Can remember it now, it didn’t go well for you at all. Agree it is difficult to convey sometimes on a forum. 

Hope there is some way of us following your adventures and to see what your wife is allowed to buy  (a joke honestly)

Dh6

Sounds fantastic Hugheskevi. Several years ago we did a west coast road trip visiting some of the places you mention. 

I’d highly recommend barringer crater and also the salt flats of Death Valley if you haven’t been already. We also did a whale watching trip out of Monterey which is one of the best things we’ve ever done.

kind regards DH

hugheskevi

Dh6 said:

Sounds fantastic Hugheskevi. Several years ago we did a west coast road trip visiting some of the places you mention. 

I’d highly recommend barringer crater and also the salt flats of Death Valley if you haven’t been already. We also did a whale watching trip out of Monterey which is one of the best things we’ve ever done.

Cheers - they are added to the map

One of the things I like about this type of travel is the flexibility - if someone mentions an interesting place they have been, you speak to a local who says you should see something, or even if there is just an interesting picture of an area when booting up windows, it can all go on the map. The visual really helps understand which areas we will find most interesting, which helps the high-level planning. There are quite a few places in Indonesia in particular I want to see, so looking forward to an overland trip between Singapore and Lombok.

cfw1994

"I am thinking about doing the whole YouTube and Instagram thing along the way " - defo worth the effort, for your pals to follow & also for you to look back on. 

I did a travel blog for ourselves and a few pals (I used https://www.travelblog.org, & made ourselves a book of it at the end) when we did a month long US family trip 9 years ago.  Highly recommended, both for pals at the time, and for us to browse back on from time to time.
I had worked for US companies for 25 years & spent a lot of time there, our kids had never been.

Time for planes, trains and automobiles: some hints below:

Watched live volleyball at London 2012....got a plane, watch the final in the Sports Bar at the New Yorker (a beautifully iconic hotel!).   Avoided jet-lag by storming New York with a City Pass (4-5 attractions each day for 3 days...exhausting but a great start!)....an early morning train to D.C., visit a Smithsonian or two, meet some US pals for a Chinatown meal and wander about (top tip - in D.C., ignore the bigger monuments and go up the Post Office building - from the top you get an amazing view over the city, & the basement has a fabulous 'independent' food court!).   Other top tip there (& for many cities) is to do a walking tour - done this in Paris, Reykjavik as well - always great fun, & a cheap way to see a City, even one you think you know.

We then flew to Salt Lake City, picked up Winifred (or Jeep Cherokee) then blitzed the west - canyon rafting from Page; stop over at the astonishing "Mystic Mike's hot springs in a cabin", stopped in a lodge on the rim of my favourite spot, spectacular Bryce Canyon (where you can walk to the bottom and back in a few hours)....on to the Grand Canyon for a night....slid down to Lake Havasu City (just to see London Bridge - it was baking hot, the lake was like getting in a hot bath!) then Vegas for a break (stayed at a massive airbnb suite in the MGM Towers - main reason being to wash clothes half-way through!).  See a show - Beetles Love is brilliant, and Cris Angel's "Mindfreak" is truly astonishing - we had Ariane Grande sat behind us!), take a Sunday morning Segway tour in Boulder City
Second half: on to LA for a few nights (plenty there for us), then drove to Yosemite (watch your speed...we were stopped but only cautioned when he realised the paperwork!).  As someone said above, definitely take in Monterrey (great aquarium, and the whale watching is brilliant, but take coats, you go a long way out & it gets cold!)....up through Silicon Valley (family pic by the company sign!), many quirky things I knew there for them, & finished in SanFran - stayed in an airbnb at an amazing building (one of the "Painted Ladies" the green one on the left!).
Finally back, in time for a day at the Paralympics.   Phew!

Quite the month, & one we still have super-fond memories of (& pictures on the wall!).

MallyGirl

hugheskevi said:

• See Firewalkers Alaskan Malamute kennels - for the last 5 years we have walked and looked after a friend's Alaskan Malamute, so keen to see them in their natural habitat. I enjoy trying to theme holidays as much as possible around our interests, so for example we have done recent trips tracking wolves in Romania and going to see ospreys at their winter migration locations in The Gambia.
• Head up north to Prudhoe Bay (the traditional starting point of a Trans-America overland trip) - quite likely to do this with a tour company for ease as it doesn't seem a great idea to drive in that area, even in summer, but may take a bus if the summer bus is operating.
• Head back to Fairbanks, then on to Denali National Park, Talkeetna and Anchorage, and then fly back to Seattle.

I am MallyGirl as I have 2 Alaskan Malamutes so I am quite jealous of the first point.
We booked for an Alaskan trip some years ago but forest fires destroyed so many of the holiday lodges that it ceased to be viable - still on our list though. 
It all sounds great - I have never been to Central or South America.
I would echo the recommendations for Monterey - Aquarium and Whale Watching. I love sea otters and it is a good place to see them.
We were very lucky with Yosemite - arrived on the first day of reopening after flooding had closed it for months in early 1997. We got interviewed by TV crews - "you came all the way from England..."- as they outnumbered the tourists due to it not opening till after lunch. It will probably never be that quiet again.

trevjl

See Juneau area (including Mendenhall Glacier), Sitka, Haines and Skagway - probably flying out of Juneau to and from Sitka , then taking boats to Haines and Skagway

Take a flight from Juneau to Skagway, now that is an experience. I actually did it the other way, but whichever way it is a fantastic flight, sat next to the pilot too.

sjp999

Anybody thinking about Monterey who likes a really gorgeous acoustic guitar might want to pop up to Santa Cruz for a peek at the SCGC workshop.

While I doubt he remembers me by name, I can provide a "reference" that should be enough to get you a tour, something that Richard is usually happy to do - he really likes talking about guitar wood to whoever's prepared to listen.

cfw1994

MallyGirl said:

We were very lucky with Yosemite - arrived on the first day of reopening after flooding had closed it for months in early 1997. We got interviewed by TV crews - "you came all the way from England..."- as they outnumbered the tourists due to it not opening till after lunch. It will probably never be that quiet again.

We got 'lucky' with Yosemite....wondered why half the 'cabins' were blocked off.....discovered afterwards they'd had a hantavirus outbreak (including a death 😳)
Still, all fine with us....caught sunset and a ranger story up at Glacier Point overlooking Half Dome....& as a bonus, we all survived 👀

Dh6

We stayed in at the “ evergreen lodge “ in Yosemite national park. I have seen some fantastic sights in my 34 years on this planet but the view of the half dome and Yosemite valley from glacier point is the best bar none! 

Stargazing on a clear night in Yosemite  is absolutely immense with no need for a telescope or binoculars.