End of part I
To finalise this part of the trip, here is a summary of our time and the travelling and a little of our expenses.
This leg was very much a travelling holiday with about 18500 miles travelled in 65 days, a fair pace in anyone’s book. This was the plan though, to test ourselves and the truck and camper. All came through well but we will definitely slow down from now on.
We had 68 days total, 55 with the camper on and we camped 38. There were 16 nights with friends and family, 13 nights in motels/hotels and 1 in a plane.
We spent $1800 setting up the camper with porta pottie, fridge, bedding, appliances, utensils and basic food stuffs.
RV parks and camping cost about $25 per night with the highest being in Vancouver, $62, ouch! Motels etc averaged at about $100 per night
Fuel spend was about $5000. It was all cheaper than we are used to in Australia so did not concentrate on the highs and lows too much.
We put $500 into tools and spares for the Dodge and spent $2200 on brakes, a wheel bearing and servicing it. Registration and insurance were $1200 for a year. One puncture repair and one tyre replacement came to $400.
The Alaskan marine highway cost us $650 for two small trips but was very enjoyable and I would say good value.
We made almost all of our own meals when camping, lunches too and found value in the supermarkets everywhere. Restaurants when we were in the hotels/motels boosted the daily average.
We will hope to travel more cheaply in Central America on the next leg.
For me the highlights were,
- the Dalton Highway and its terminus at Deadhorse, 70˚north, being the end of one endeavour and the start of a trip to Ushuaia.
- Seeing the animals, bears, sea otter, caribou, musk ox, moose, arctic squirrels and so on that do not exist in our country.
- The canyons and gorges of Utah, Icefields Parkway in BC, glaciers, top of the world highway, Dempster highway and I really liked coming out of Yellowstone and driving to Cody Wyoming.
-Cape Cod was unexpectedly enjoyable and Martha’s vineyard was not so, but I am glad to have seen it and the lighthouse tour at Rhode Island was awesome value.
- We stayed away from the big cities mostly but loved Seattle, Denver and Montreal.
- We appreciate man’s ability to engineer solutions to nature’s barriers and we saw some great examples of this in the Alaskan pipeline, Duluth lifting bridge and the locks on the great lakes. There are some great road solutions too, the USA truly is the country of the automobile
But overall the best things are the amazing people that we met everywhere, from family who hosted us to travellers in campgrounds and at fuel stops, waiting for roadwork to complete or stopping us in the street for a chat. We love you all. We will be back.
