The Alaska 2015 Adventure Wrap-Up

We’re back from our amazing 7-week adventure to and from Alaska by rail, cruise, boats, buses, raft, dog sled (kinda), RVs (not ours) and plane.

Not that 16 minutes can fully tell the tales of 7 weeks, but we’ve put together some video highlights to share a slice of the breathtaking beauty of Alaska. It includes video of the train trip across country, glaciers calving, whales and the amazing tidal bore wave.. and hopefully gives you a taste of the scale of this trip.

(Direct Video Link)

For the full story on each leg of this journey:

• Planning Our Great Alaskan Adventure
• Phase 1 — Amtrak Train Travel from St. Louis to Vancouver, BC
• Phase 2 — Touring Vancouver, BC
• Phase 3 — Northbound Cruise to Alaska
• Phase 4 — Alaska Railroad GoldStar Service to Fairbanks
• Phase 5 — Adventurer Class Railroad from Fairbanks to Anchorage via Denali
• Phase 6 — Exploring the Kenai Peninsula in a RV Rental
• Phase 7 — Seward and Holland America Zaandam Southbound Cruise
• Phase 8 — Storybrooke, Vancouver & Seattle
• The Bus Summer 2015 Renovation Hit List

Cost of 7-weeks of Semi-Vacation?

When we were planning this adventure, we put an arbitrary goal of sticking to around $10,000 for this excursion. We were initially figuring on about 4 weeks of being ‘out there’ away from our RV.

We shared the individual costs of each leg of the journey in the posts above. But all added up, it came to $10,800.

We think that’s pretty darn cheap for 2 people for a 7-week vacation. That comes out to $110 per person per day for a pretty freaking amazing experience.

And we could have knocked a couple grand off the tab by not splurging on things like a balcony cabin or GoldStar train service.. but heck, life is short.

Sure, we’re not going to be living it up like that every day all year long – but it’s pretty darn obtainable to realize some extended trips like this with some saving up.

We of course couldn’t have stuck to this budget and extended out the trip by 3 weeks if it wasn’t for the outpouring of invitations for guest space. Aside from the cruises, overnight train and rental RV (which account for 23 nights), we only paid for 5 nights of lodging on the entire trip.

That’s pretty incredible, and we couldn’t be more grateful. We of course treated each host to meals and treats as they would accept. Not only did we save a big chunk of change that enabled us to explore more, we feel we had a less touristy experience.

 

Plus, we deepened a LOT of friendships, which is simply invaluable.

Another benefit of taking a vacation as a RVer who left their home behind is that we didn’t have other living costs we were paying at the same time – such as rent/mortgage, power, water, cable, lawn care or homeowners association fees.

Our normal living costs like fuel and campgrounds were a big fat ZERO.

Of course, don’t ask us about the bus renovation bill racking up in our absence. 🙂

Semi-Vacation?

We considered this excursion to be mostly vacation – certainly more vacation than our normal every day travel life.

It’s really hard to be self-employed and truly get away. We don’t get things like vacation time. You don’t work? Income or business momentum can slip.

We did end up working an average of about 10-15 hours a week to keep up with our RVMobileInternet.com news reporting, member assistance and content. We just simply can’t build up a reputation as a trusted source of information and completely take a couple months off.

Our contract clients however were happy to allow us to take an unpaid hiatus.

Because we’ve shifted our business model away from relying on contract work to a good bit of more passive income streams (mobile apps, books and a membership site) – livable income did keep flowing.

That’s been a huge quality of life improvement for us over the years for balancing work, travel & life.. it’s definitely been worth the upfront work & risk to build it.

Things We’d Do Differently

You know, this trip was amazing. I’m actually quite blown away with how smoothly it all played out.

We did the upfront planning, and we were able to follow the itinerary to get from point A to B.

We didn’t pre-plan much beyond the transportation and let serendipity steer us from there.

There’s honestly not too much I’d change. But, if I was advising myself back in April with my experiences now, here’s some things I might have convinced myself to do differently:

• A little more open ended – It’s a tough balance traveling in a high tourist season – what do you need to book in advance, and what can wait until last minute? While we had talked about not booking the return trip from Alaska until we were actually there, I jumped on a great cruise deal back in May. I’m just more comfortable with a bit of a plan, especially when I don’t have my own bed to sleep in at night. Turned out, we could have booked the same cruise the day before departure and saved about $400. But would I have been able to relax leaving it that open ended? Probably not. Chris would have preferred having less things booked overall.

• 

  Packed less winter clothing –  I still owe you a post on how we did this trip in just a backpack each. But I will reveal that we totally overpacked. Yup. We thought.. Alaska. Glaciers. Cold. Wet. We each took way too many long sleeved shirts, long pants and layerables. It just turned out to be a lot warmer than anticipated, and we could have done with less.

• One Less Train – We love train travel, it’s a magical relaxing way to travel. But we could have done without the return trip from Fairbanks to Anchorage being by the SAME train we took up. If we had this to do over again, we’d probably find another way back south – small plane? bus? dog sled? moose back?
• More RV Time – A one week RV rental just wasn’t enough, it went by way too quickly and we didn’t feel we got to really explore that much. Even things like stocking the fridge for a week was tough – condiments, cooking oils and such just aren’t packaged in that small of a quantity. If we were to do this trip again, I’d probably book a 2-week rental and spend it all in the Kenai, or even go down to Valdez.

Would we have preferred going to Alaska by RV?

With so many of our friends still up in Alaska touring around, while we sit here in a house in St. Louis in no-RV limbo land – I gotta admit, we are a bit resentful that we didn’t have as much flexibility to stay up there longer and make up the pace as we went.

Each glacier, whale or group picture they post makes us cringe with envy (but keep ’em coming guys!).

Overall, we feel we got a great first taste of Alaska on this trip, created memories to last a lifetime and whet an appetite to go back for more in the future.

We also really needed a break from from RVing.

Heck, we love RVing – traveling in your home, having always changing amazing office views and never having to pack is a perfect balance for us.

But we identify first and foremost as experience junkies who crave variety.. we’re nomads who really gravitate towards RVing.

When we bought our bus 4-years ago, it was with the intention that it would be our US mobile home base that we’d park a few months a year and explore in other ways. Like we had before, such as moving to the Virgin Islands for a winter season back in 2010. It just took us a while to get back to that.

So no, we don’t regret not having done this trip by RV.

This adventure was perfect, a great way to shake it up and travel differently. And it’s convinced us that we need to keep on track to continue our intention of mixing it up. Despite putting a bunch of time and effort into completing the bus renovations this summer – don’t be surprised to see the bus empty a little more often in the future.

That’s always been the plan.

And that’s a wrap!

Thank you so much for virtually following along..
we’ve enjoying having you along for the ride!