Well, although we didn’t know it at the time, this little adventure started in 2005, has taken us 18 years and 10 tours – but 2023 will have us ticking off a visit to every one of the 50 states of the USA – and setting foot in our last state to visit – Alaska ! 🚢✈️ – now only weeks away !
Whilst its just 1 state, it is not an insignificant state, certainly size-wise – this 1 state on its own is 1/5th the size of the entire Lower 48 states combined ! And, given its way out on its own, it wasn’t easy to just “drive to another state” – so it was logical to do it on its own – well it won’t be quite on its own as we will be hopping the border and including the nearby USA neighbour on this tour – Canada.
In fact we will be kicking off our tour in Vancouver, Canada – with a couple of nights before joining a 7 day cruise taking us up the coast to Whittier, Alaska – with plenty of spectacular scenery along the way. On our cruise, the stretch of the Alaskan southern coast is so long that almost half the distance of the cruise is “coastal USA” and all the stops are at Alaskan ports.
After our cruise, we will then spend about 9 days touring the major “easily accessible” sights of the state, including Anchorage, Denali National Park and Fairbanks. We had orginally hoped to see as many of the 8 US National Parks in Alaska as possible to add to our “National Park visits” list. However with end of season closures, trying to negotiate the vast expanse of the state in the time available and the horrendous expense in getting to and from some of them, that’s not going to happen ! But we’ve planned plenty more sights to see.
Compared to our usual distances it doesn’t look much, but here is our driving plan –
And we really couldn’t just limit ourselves to one US state on the tour so from Alaska we return to Seattle in Washington state, picking up a car and skimming the US/Canada border before delving north into Canada. We than plan a big driving loop taking in the big sights of Canada in this area – Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper and Kamloops and then back to Seattle before heading home.
We have lots of fantastic things planned for this tour and it should be a memorable conclusion to our wonderful and epic “50 States Adventure” !
