Two Moro's Travels

“Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.”

Alaska, the last frontier, is our next destination. And excitement and thrilled does not even begin to cover the emotions we are feeling over this trip 

Having lived there from 1977 to 1980, we are excited to relive some of our past experiences and add a few more to the list. We will be retracing our original trip route up.  

We were young, inexperienced, and financially, well- basically – broke. The military took care of all the important expenses like our medical, rent, and utilities so we were free to use the rest to explore wherever our car took us. Our little 1977 Mazda GLC took us all over the state. If a road existed, we probably drove it with the assistance of the Alaskan milepost, https://themilepost.com/ . If it snowed and we got stuck, we’d just stick one leg out the door, rock that car and that 4-speed stick-shift, little devil just took off. Total cost of that brand new car with less than 10 miles was was $2,995, and it was incredible. It drove us all over Alaska then down to the lower 48 via the west coast through Washington, Oregon, California , down to Mexico then across through Nevada and Arizona, north into Colorado finally east to New Jersey. We have always had a strong desire to travel and explore the world.  We had the wanderlust spirit in our blood.

SO how do you prepare for such a trip?  We are figuring it out as we plan.

HANDY ITEMS:

I am following some of my basic travel ideas that I have posted in previous posts as they have served us well. Some highlights: pack outfits in one roll, plastic, see through bags for everything, healthy food snacks, small bag with essentials for washing up when camping overnight, or in our case, “vanping.”

ITINERARY:

I do a rough sketch of the places we are going through and/ or want to visit or stop by and see.  I create a word doc. For example, we plan to go to on the Dalton Highway. I have looked through several websites and have selected places of interest for example, here are two:

The Coldfoot Truck Stop is iconic. Iditarod dog musher Dick Mackey and his wife Kathy opened the truck stop in 1981. Today, it also has a cafe and a post office. It’s still cool to send a postcard with a stamp from within the Arctic Circle. 

Arctic Circle Wayside #9.  Wel­come to the Alas­ka Arc­tic Circle. Be sure to take a pic­ture in front of the sign dis­play­ing N 66 33’W 150 48. You are now cross­ing the Arc­tic Cir­cle. This is the place where the sun does­n’t set on sum­mer sol­stice and does­n’t rise on win­ter sol­stice. The sea­sons are a lit­tle stranger up here, with extreme sun, extreme dark and extreme cold. (one of the best photo opportunities in the state is standing next to the sign that marks the Arctic Circle along the Dalton Highway).

I set it up this way because I can additional information that I find right under the same section, such as The Dalton Highway.  I work on this weeks before and print it right before the trip. You could print articles directly from the internet, but I find them cumbersome and full of ads. This way I extract only the information I am interested in. I find it helps me organize the trip in an orderly manner and gets my excitement building. Plus while looking up one thing, I discover something else exciting in another site and can just cut and paste it and add it to my sections.  This is just a rough itinerary; not a plan to follow to the letter.  

HOTELS: 

We do not reserve any hotels. It may not work for you, but it has for us.  The number one reason is we don’t know where we will be from day-to-day! Especially if I find a photogenic location. I may want to work with different light effects. We do, for the most part, 3 days of traveling and sleep in our van equipped with a mattress that is more comfortable than my own bed. Again, it’s only rough sketch of what we do. We try to arrange  to stay in  hotels for 2 consecutive nights. We check-in time around 3-4 and check-out at 11:00 two days later. This allows us to recharge, rest, shower, and restock and make any adjustments to our itinerary for the next few days. These stops are not wasted – we also use this time to for any road updates, photo backups, uploads, cleaning of the gear, etc. The amount of days are not important; the important part is that we have these options to choose from when we need them. 

Part of the fun of travel photography and long road trips is packing my photography gear. For my photography I MUST HAVE:

Drones, my Fujifilm cameras both regular APS-C and medium format gear, lenses, Cables, Car chargers, solar chargers, iPad, external hard drives for backups, bags, cases, etc. Check my post here for more detailed information

quote by: Kristin Hannah from: historyfangirl.com