the plan

We fly to Minneapolis - St. Paul, then catch a charter bus to the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa. We spend the night in the new RV and get a chance to settle in. The next morning we have an orientation session, at which we probably sign our lives away before getting the ignition keys. Off we go to some emporium to provision, then westward ho!

A few days later, we hang a right somewhere around Old Faithful and head north to Banff, Jasper, and Dawson Creek where, after ~2500 miles, we finally get to the Alaska Highway for another ~1500 miles. Then to Denali for a few days including a bus tour as far as they go into the park that early in the season, to Seward for a couple of days with perhaps a Fjord tour by boat, a glacier or two, ... who knows? Our only constraints are that we start May 13 in Iowa and finish May 31 in Anchorage.

The planned itinerary has us spending 5 nights in the lower 48 (including the night at the factory), 8 nights in Canada, 6 nights in Alaska, and 1 night on an airplane on the return.

Early [and changeable] plans sketched out on Google maps ...

We hope to blog along the way, uploading when wi-fi is available, limited by how much typing and photo editing we can realistically do on a tablet computer.

June, back home, laundry done, lawn mowed, let the rewriting begin...

Our flights to MSP were fine, even early, which gave us ~5 hours to kill before the charter buses would arrive. Airports are designed for arriving passengers to collect their luggage, then get out of there. So a group of 100+ waiting for buses, looking for dinner, etc., taxes the system. There is indoor waiting space with limited seating at the bus depot, one restaurant accessible outside security, and a couple of sandwich vendors. The weather was good while we were there, and many fellow trekkers waited outside.

The buses arrived ~on time, then we all had to sort out which bus we were assigned to. In spite of dire warnings about the buses not waiting, the drivers seemed quite intent on making sure all were aboard.

The trip to Forest City was relaxing since we weren't driving. That all changes tomorrow. The RVs were waiting, the staff unloaded our luggage, then we got to move in for the night. In order to test systems, we were set up for dry camping the first night with staff from Winnebago available the next morning to tend to any problems.

We tested all the hardware and systems and had no problems. A good start.

[ * 'venture - what our delightful granddaughters call an adventure ]