Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

It's time to go back to Alaska. Topically, that is. It feels like my trip there was two months ago even though it was literally just two weeks ago. (The last day of my trip was Wednesday, June 17.)  One thing I've been meaning to write about since even before I embarked on the trip is a retrospective on how I planned it: How I finally got to Alaska.

Alaska has been on my list of places to go for years. It's actually on two bucket lists I have: One is to visit all the states in the US— which I've now done, Alaska being #51 out of 51. (It's 51 because I include Washington, D.C.) The other is to visit all the national parks in the US. There are currently 63 parks, eight of which are in Alaska. Until recently I had 11 parks left to go— including all 8 in Alaska. (Now it's 10 and 7.) Clearly I was going to have to go to Alaska!

I've been saying for several years now, "This summer I'll go to Alaska." It's an easy thing to say, a slightly harder thing to do. But it's not logistically hard. There are commercial airline flights to multiple cities in Alaska. And it hasn't been a money issue; not for the last umpteen years, at least.

Too Many Good Ideas

The part that's been hard is the planning. It's hard because it's not simply a matter of, "I'll book and pay for this flight to Anchorage." I want to do stuff in Alaska— fun stuff, worthwhile stuff— not just tap a foot on the base on leave. Like, Denali is there, the highest peak in North America. And countless other things.

Ultimately the hard part with planning was the superabundance of great things to do. I'd be, like, "Okay, we'll fly to Anchorage and drive to visit Denali National Park. But there's also stuff to do near Anchorage before and after. But maybe before, because after visiting Denali we could drive further north a visit another park. But the only way in is via chartering a flight, so maybe we do that from Fairbanks. And...." It became analysis paralysis.

Simplify!

The solution to analysis paralysis is to simplify: reduce the scope of the question. Rather than solve for, "How do I plan a perfect 9-10 day trip to Alaska that hits all the high points?" I changed the question to, "How do I plan a fun 4-5 day trip to Alaska that hits one great thing?" And that's how I focused in on Kenai Fjords National Park.

BTW, this was the same approach that got us to Australia last December. For years we've been wanting to visit Australia, but the complexity of planning a "perfect" trip has always left us putting it off. I mean, it's a whole freaking country and there's so much to do! Last November we decided to simplify: We decided we'd focus on one major city (we picked Sydney), find just enough stuff for a solid one-week trip (which means 10-11 days including travel time), and look for clusters of enjoyable things within a 2-3 hour driving radius. It worked. It worked beautifully. And of course we'll have to go back to Australia at least a few more times to see & do everything we want to see & do. Just like we're going to need to visit Alaska a few more times. But that's the strength of the approach rather than it's weakness— because now we've been there once and have better insights on how to go back!

For years now I've had a bucket list goal of visiting all the states in the US. After notching Alabama, number 49 out of 51 in 2016, I remained stuck at 49/51 for several years. (I'm using 51 because I'm counting Washington, D.C. in addition to the well-known fact of 50 states in the US.) Last year I reached 50/51 by visiting Louisiana. That left only "The Last Frontier" of the US— no, not outer space; that's the final frontier— Alaska. And now I've got plans laid in to visit Alaska in June.

We'll visit Alaska for a 5 day trip in June. We'll fly to Anchorage; it's a 5 hour flight non-stop from San Francisco. Once in Anchorage we'll rent a car and drive out to Seward, AK.

Why Seward? There's nothing to recommend that podunk little town except that it's right outside Kenai Fjords National Park. So this trip will serve two bucket list items: getting me to 51/51 states and adding another national park on my national park bucket list. It'll be national park number 53 out of 63. We'll spend a few days visiting the park, both on foot— we'll hike to a glacier!— and by boat, where we'll see more glaciers.

One thing that's struck me as we've made our bookings is how expensive everything is in Alaska. Decent hotels in Anchorage start above $300/night and go up from there. (We're staying one night in Anchorage after a late evening flight.) Rental cars are $200/day. And no, these are not last-minute prices; I was booking 7 weeks ahead. I tried dates in July and August to sanity-check if we'd just chosen the wrong time to visit, but no, Alaska's always expensive.

"What's our alternative?" I asked myself rhetorically multiple times as I choked on the prices. "The only alternative is we don't go." So we'll pay the price to complete our all-the-states bucket list. And notch one more national park.

West Virginia Travelog #3
New River Gorge National Park - Sat, 16 Sep 2023. 3:30pm

Well, we did it. We got to the the US's newest national park only... *checks watch*... 33 months after it was designated. One of our bucket lists is to visit every one of the (now) 63 national parks. As of today at New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia we are at 51 [loud tock sound] 52.

We didn't come here just to tick the box (or tock the clock), of course. We came here to enjoy doing the things we enjoy doing at parks. In beauty we walk!



Our first visit in the park this afternoon was to Sandstone Falls. It's at the south end of the sprawling park, near the surprisingly well kept little town of Hinton. This area is up-river from the rest of the park. Here the New River hasn't carved as deep a gorge through the Allegheny Mountains. "New River" is a horrible misnomer, BTW. This river is literally older than the mountains around it... and these mountains are old!



The trail here is easy; there's a boardwalk guiding visitors out partway across the river. But, as is often the case, we found the best views by stepping off the boardwalk and picking our way across the rocks.

In beauty we walk.

UPDATE: More ahead in part 2!

Mississippi Travelog #1 / New Orleans travelog #10
Pinckneyville, MS - Tuesday, 25 Apr 2023, 12pm

This morning we left New Orleans. We slept in a bit after both of us had rough nights, packed our bags after breakfast and showers, walked over to the car rental depot on Canal Street at 9:30, and hit the road a bit past 10am. Our destination: Mississippi.



"Why Mississippi?" a lot of my friends have asked. The state doesn't have a great reputation for things to do... or civil rights... or even democratic process anymore. Well, Mississippi is on my bucket list. One of my bucket lists, that is. I want to visit all the states in the US. I've been to 48 + Washington, DC so far. Having crossed this line today I'm down to only Alaska as the one state I haven't visited.

We're doing more than just tapping a foot and leaving. In other words, we did find stuff to do in Mississippi. We're going hiking at some waterfalls this afternoon, then at a canyon tomorrow. In between we'll stay overnight in Columbia. Part of my goal with this bucket list is to visit each state on more than a technicality. I aim to genuinely spend time and see & do stuff in each state.

And as far as those other concerns.... As a mixed-race family we have discussed risk mitigation for this trip. 😓

Every year around the new year I do a variety of retrospectives about the year just finished. Several of those are about travel, as that's the main theme of this blog. My travel is complete for the year— I returned from Five Days in the Desert Wednesday night even though I still have a few more blogs to push out from the trip— so I can tally up my 2022 travel statistics even though there's still just over half a day to go in 2022.

Here are Five Things:

1. Coronavirus remained part of the story in 2022. You would think that 2-3 years on from the emergence of Coronavirus, and 12-24 months past the availability of vaccines, we'd be past it by now. You'd think. But the Omicron surge in late 2021 led us to cancel a planned New Year's Eve trip a year ago and stay home for the first few months of 2022. Coronavirus remained a concern throughout the year. We took precautions on every trip— including wearing masks in all airports and aboard aircraft and other mass transit— and tested ourselves whenever we experienced symptoms that might be Covid.


2. I flew 32,000 miles in 2022. I track this via flightmemory.com, where you can input your flights and it computes the distance via Great Circle routes. Technically the actual distance I flew with my butt in a seat is greater, as flight plans deviate from Great Circle routes to take advantage of winds and avoid bad weather, but this is the statistic I go with because it's easy to compute. After a few years of very little flying (11k miles in 2020, all in Jan-Feb, and 21k in 2021) this is a partial return to my recent average of 50k/year. Of course it's nothing like the 150k+/year I flew back in the late 00s/early 10s when I was a globe-trotting business traveler.


3. Speaking of business travel, it's only starting to come back. Trade shows resumed running in-person this year, but meeting clients in person isn't yet a thing again. Partly that's because lots of people in IT haven't returned to offices after Coronavirus. And even where people are back in offices now, company policies and cultures largely haven't reopened to permitting visitors onsite.


4. I traveled 79 days and 72 nights in 2022. As with flight miles this is up from the past two years though not quite back to my pre-Coronavirus average of around 100/year. The difference is that while business travel remains slower than before Coronavirus I've partly made up for it in my schedule by traveling more frequently for leisure. Almost 80% of my travel in 2022 was leisure. Yay, lots of long weekend trips!


5. Bucket List items checked off: 0. It was a poor year for crossing travel things off my bucket list. I visited no new US states (I'm still at 49/51), no new foreign countries, and no new US national parks (still at 51/63). I already have trips booked to make progress on 2 of these in 2023. Planning for the third is in the works.

More 2022 retrospectives to come.

Colorado Travelog #40
Aspen, CO - Saturday, 9 Jul 2022, 10:30am

This morning we got up early, packed our bags and loaded the truck, checked out from our hotel in Glenwood Springs, and drove an hour south to Aspen. It's part of an audible we called a few days ago to realize an aspiration of mine since 1990, thirty-two years ago, to visit the place in this picture:



Just getting to Aspen wasn't the end of the story. From there we had to park and ride a bus 25 minutes up to the lake. Bus tickets are limited; Saturday was the only day this trip I was able to find 2 seats at a reasonable time, which meant extending our trip from Saturday to Sunday in addition to rebooking a few nights of hotels. But we did all that, and now.....



Boom! 💥

Every year around the new year I do a variety of retrospectives about the year just finished. I thought I would get to this a few days ago but there was too much of a blogging backlog (as is usual when I travel) from our Hawaii trip. So I'll start it here with this blog about travel statistics, aka "Oh, the places I went", for 2021.

Here are Five Things:

1. Coronavirus remained the big story in 2021. It kept me home for 3 months early in the year, Even after we got vaccinated in March-April it remained a concern hanging over our heads, a constant "Should we or shouldn't we?" question about travel. Then came the Delta surge, casting more of a pall over late year travel, though getting boosters in October shored up our confidence enough to travel over Thanksgiving— though we tried to avoid areas where people went unmasked. Then the virus came back with a vengeance in late December with the winter/Omicron surge, causing us to cancel a planned New Year's Eve trip just hours before we would have left. For much of the year it felt less like, "Oh, the places you'll go!" and more like, "Oh, the places you won't go!"


2. I flew 21,000 miles in 2021. I track this via flightmemory.com, where you can input your flights and it computes the distance via Great Circle routes. (Technically the actual distance I flew with my butt in a seat is greater, as flight plans deviate from Great Circle routes to take advantage of winds and avoid bad weather, but this is the statistic I go with because it's easy.) Except for 2020, when I flew just 11,000 miles due to the pandemic deterring me from flying most of the year, this year's 21k miles is the fewest I've flown since... 2003.


3. I traveled outside my home area 50 days and 46 nights in 2021. As with flight miles this is up from 2020, when I logged 32 days and 27 nights away from home, but it's lower than any other year going back to about 2004. One interesting thing about 2021 is that my travel was all leisure travel; I had 0% work travel. Credit the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic/endemic for that. Even in 2020 I had two work trips early in the year, before Coronavirus precautions started shutting things at the end of February.


4. New states visited, new countries visited: 0. In 2021 I held fast at having visited 49/51 of the United States and the District of Columbia. I visited no new countries. Visiting all the states is one of my bucket list items. The two states I'm missing are Alaska and Mississippi. Hawk and I are discussing whether to visit Alaska next year or in 2023. As for Mississippi... well "the armpit of America" may be the last crossed off the list.


5. New national parks visited: +1, -1. Wait, what, minus one? Yes, this year I went from having visited 50/62 US national parks— another of my bucket lists is to visit all the national parks— to having visited 51/63. Visiting #51, Acadia National Park in June, was the step forward. The step back came when an Act of Congress created a new national park, the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. Technically the legislation passed in late December 2020 as part of the massive $1.4T omnibus spending bill with $900B of Covid-19 relief, but even the Park Service didn't publish a press release until late January.

More 2021 retrospectives to come.

Maine Week Travelog #2
Acadia National Park - Monday, 14 Jun 2021, 5:30pm.

After checking in to our motel in Bar Harbor, ME this afternoon we headed back to Acadia National Park since there would still be light for another few hours. We decided a good way to spend the late afternoon and evening hours was on a drive of the park loop road. Rangers had advised us it takes "an hour... plus however much you want to stop." We figured we could make it in 3 hours.

Our first stop came almost right away.



The stops on the park loop road aren't labeled, per se. Most of them are just... there. You pull over if you see something you like. We liked this view of Bar Harbor. Our hotel isn't in the picture; it's just off the map to the left of the ferry dock in the foreground.

Our next stop came only a mile or two later.



This stop wasn't even marked on the map. It was just a scene we passed while driving that made us say, "Wow, what's that?" Fortunately there was a small pullout with parking for 3-4 cars. According to the topographical map we bought, this big meadow is called, appropriately enough, Big Meadow.

Our third stop, Sand Beach, turned into more than a stop-and-shoot. We'd get our hike on. Continue reading in next entry.

Updated to add: In beginning our visit to Acadia National Park we have ticked another national park off our bucket list. One of our bucket lists is to visit all US national parks. Acadia makes #51 of 62 for us.

I've written before that one of our "bucket list" goals is to visit every national park in the US. For the past 13 months we've been at 50/62, since visiting Virgin Islands National Park in December 2019. I saw today, though, that they've moved our bucket! The New River Gorge National River in West Virginia was reclassified as the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. This increases the count of national parks to 63— and adds one more park to our not-visited list.

Although I only saw this change in the news today it actually happened last month. The delay is due to the happy and sad way that national parks get created nowadays. Of all the designations for parks in the US., National Park is the highest. Designating a national park requires an Act of Congress. This national park, like all others named in the past many years, was created by pork barrel legislation— obscure proposals written by self-interested legislators rewarding narrow special interests with funding for pet projects tucked into larger, must-pass bills.

In this case the must-pass bill was December's $1.4T omnibus spending bill. Yes, that's T for trillion! The main issue in the bill was $900B (yes, mere hundreds of billions) for Covid relief. General news coverage: Politico article, 20 Dec 2020. The park proposal was tucked in there by West Virginia's two senators, Shelley Moore Capito (R) and Joe Manchin (D). Probably nobody other than them, their close patrons, and maybe a committee chair noticed at the time. Backpacker magazine ran an article (30 Dec 2020) a few days after the bill was signed. Even the park itself didn't publish an announcement until this past Thursday. The general media picked it up starting Friday, such as in this Washington Post article (22 Jan 2021).