DrewE's Alaska Trip Travelogue
I returned about a week ago from a marvelous ten-week trip to and through Alaska (and back) with my dear mother. I went in a 32' class C, actually about 35' overall with a bicycle rack on the back, with no toad. Over the next several days or maybe weeks, I'll try to sort through and post a travelogue here. I'll try to do a little each day, but that may not always be possible due to work and other commitments.
Anyhow, to kick things off, here's a somewhat non-travelogue blurb about some books and items that we found particularly worthwhile on the trip and that I would generally recommend.
Books
Most of these are "standards" well-known in this forum.
The Milepost is useful, even if it's mostly advertising and text lifted from road signs. In some ways it's perhaps more useful for planning than as a travel companion. My copy did get thoroughly thumbed through.
Church's Traveler's Guide to Alaskan Camping is excellent, at lest in its most recent edition. It is thorough, accurate, and so far as I could tell very complete, and is nowhere near as dry reading as a campground directory by rights ought to be. I recommend it highly.
The TourSaver did save us enough money to make it worth purchasing. It would be wise to look over the offers before ordering as many of them are for organized, rather adventurous tours and such which may not appeal to everyone. It would be pretty much useless for a single traveler.
I ordered both a DeLorme and Benchmark Alaska atlas. Much as I wanted to like the DeLorme atlas (and like having actual topographical maps with elevations), the benchmark atlas was far more useful and readable and is the better of the two for RV use. Particularly annoying in the DeLorme atlas is the very close similarity between minor roads and major contour lines, which are practically the same color and width and very easily mistaken for each other.
The AAA tourbooks were kind of handy, too.
Gizmos
The provincial parks in the Yukon, and some of the Alaska state parks, provide free campfire wood. Other campgrounds have campfire wood for sale. Usually, this comes in rather too large chunks for a small campfire. While it's possible to split it (eventually) with a normal hatchet, the Fiskars X11 Splitting Axe works a lot better at this task and is a nice portable 17 inch size. I bought mine at Canadian Tire, and consider it money well spent.
A window squeegee is essential (along with a bucket that it fits into). I have about the cheapest one that Wal-Mart sells, around $3 if I recall, and it served very well. An oblong bucket works a lot more efficiently for it than a round bucket. For stubborn bugs, a little bit of dish soap or Pine-Sol in the water helps.
For camp sites that slope inconveniently near the entry door, we were occasionally glad to have this handy Harbor Freight step stool platform.
I rather appreciated having a set of pull-apart detachable keychains much like these for deploying and retrieving leveling ramps, so I could unlock the outside compartment without having to shut down the engine. I suppose it would be less frequently useful if one has automatic levelers or a trailer where the leveling procedure is somewhat different.
Anyhow, to kick things off, here's a somewhat non-travelogue blurb about some books and items that we found particularly worthwhile on the trip and that I would generally recommend.
Books
Most of these are "standards" well-known in this forum.
The Milepost is useful, even if it's mostly advertising and text lifted from road signs. In some ways it's perhaps more useful for planning than as a travel companion. My copy did get thoroughly thumbed through.
Church's Traveler's Guide to Alaskan Camping is excellent, at lest in its most recent edition. It is thorough, accurate, and so far as I could tell very complete, and is nowhere near as dry reading as a campground directory by rights ought to be. I recommend it highly.
The TourSaver did save us enough money to make it worth purchasing. It would be wise to look over the offers before ordering as many of them are for organized, rather adventurous tours and such which may not appeal to everyone. It would be pretty much useless for a single traveler.
I ordered both a DeLorme and Benchmark Alaska atlas. Much as I wanted to like the DeLorme atlas (and like having actual topographical maps with elevations), the benchmark atlas was far more useful and readable and is the better of the two for RV use. Particularly annoying in the DeLorme atlas is the very close similarity between minor roads and major contour lines, which are practically the same color and width and very easily mistaken for each other.
The AAA tourbooks were kind of handy, too.
Gizmos
The provincial parks in the Yukon, and some of the Alaska state parks, provide free campfire wood. Other campgrounds have campfire wood for sale. Usually, this comes in rather too large chunks for a small campfire. While it's possible to split it (eventually) with a normal hatchet, the Fiskars X11 Splitting Axe works a lot better at this task and is a nice portable 17 inch size. I bought mine at Canadian Tire, and consider it money well spent.
A window squeegee is essential (along with a bucket that it fits into). I have about the cheapest one that Wal-Mart sells, around $3 if I recall, and it served very well. An oblong bucket works a lot more efficiently for it than a round bucket. For stubborn bugs, a little bit of dish soap or Pine-Sol in the water helps.
For camp sites that slope inconveniently near the entry door, we were occasionally glad to have this handy Harbor Freight step stool platform.
I rather appreciated having a set of pull-apart detachable keychains much like these for deploying and retrieving leveling ramps, so I could unlock the outside compartment without having to shut down the engine. I suppose it would be less frequently useful if one has automatic levelers or a trailer where the leveling procedure is somewhat different.
