How long does it take?

   Shirley and I with a half dozen friends were having dinner and listening to the music of the Kurtz Brothers at Sandy Ridge Vineyards in Norwalk. Both the meal and the music were excellent. Our friends were curious about our travel plans. (Or said they were just to be polite.) When we confessed a desire to see Alaska yet again, it generated some curiosity about how long it takes to drive “all that way.”

   Though we have done it twice, the short answer is there is no way to tell how long it might take us. The question implies a destination reachable in a straight shot. You can say it takes about an hour to get from Toledo to Detroit or two hours to Cleveland. Most of us are accustomed to established departure and arrival times so we can grasp the magnitude of the undertaking. The question also implies that driving all that way must be rather daunting and that there is nothing worth seeing or doing between here and there. From our point of view, "driving all that way" really means we get to spend all summer doing it. We don't think of it as one long trip but as a series of short trips. Please don’t throw us in that briar patch!

   Though we are always eager to get started, we are in no particular hurry once underway. It is helpful to think of RVing the way you would a Caribbean cruise: you are buying the experience not just the destination. You don’t need Carnival to get to Aruba, Barbados, or Cartegena. You could fly there in a matter of hours but that’s not the point of a cruise. In the same way, you could fly to Alaska or take a ferry or cruise ship up the Inside Passage. If you chose to drive directly to Alaska from Toledo, Google Maps says it is about 3500 miles and will take you 57 hours. You might want to pack a couple sandwiches and some bottled water.   

   On our first trip, it took 15 days just to get to Mile 0, the beginning of the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek in northern British Columbia. On our second trip, it took 22 days to Mile 0. We spent that time in the Tetons and Yellowstone before continuing up through Montana to Kootenay, Yoho, Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada. This is not the most direct route but we think the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper is absolutely magnificent. The Parkway is only about 150 miles long but we stop often to gawk at spectacular glaciers, alpine lakes and incredible waterfalls. Wildlife up the wazoo! Things just keep getting better and better the farther north you go. You could drive the Icefields Parkway in less than three hours but why would you? 

It is not hard to tell why Grand Teton is our favorite national park.

Except for Yellowstone, that is. 

And Glacier National Park sits right on the Canadian border.

But there is nothing worth seeing there...

...that would make it worth visiting.

In the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise is just west of Banff.

Moraine Lake a few miles down the road.

If you get bored with the scenery, the wildlife might convince you to slow down a little. 

  From Mile 0 at Dawson Creek, it is only another 1,400 miles through British Columbia and Yukon on the Alaska Highway to its terminus at Delta Junction. From there the whole of Alaska beckons. Must visit Denali National Park to marvel at the biggest mountain in North America. See Matanuska and a few more glaciers, preferably at least one that is calving into the sea. Take a day cruise to view whales, sea lions and seals, sea otters and other marine wildlife. See so many eagles it is no longer a big deal to have them perch right over the campsite. Watch some salmon swimming upstream. Talk a grizzly bear into posing with us for selfies. Dodge a few moose, caribou, bison, bighorns and Stone sheep on the highways.

 

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At Anchor Point you have gone about as far as you can go.

The trouble with Alaska is that there is just so much of it. Are whales and mountains, even Denali, representative of all it has to offer? Not even close. There are other Alaska posts on this blog if you would care to see more.

   Here’s a 100%, total coincidence. As I was writing this, I received an email offering a 61-day guided RV tour to Alaska. This could be an option for those who prefer to have someone else do all the research and planning so they don’t risk missing anything on the ya-gotta-see list. Reviews by past participants say they appreciated the friends they made traveling in a caravan of RVs and that they didn’t have to worry about which route to take or where to spend each night. The tour leaves from Bellingham in the northwest corner of Washington and covers 5,165 miles roundtrip. The price was only $7,695 for one or $8,995 for two. 

   Those of you who know me as a parsimonious old curmudgeon are undoubtedly grinning at that reference to only $8,995. My valuable insight is included for free so here it is.

    Anyone leaving from NW Washington need not worry about which route to take because there really are not many options. (But first you have to drive all the way to Washington.) See your atlas for highways in British Columbia and the Yukon. I bet you could figure out a route in way less than 60 seconds. The same holds true for Alaska itself. Though it is our largest state, Shirley and I have already been everywhere the paved roads go. There is a lot to see but not many ways to go about seeing it, other than float planes, because most is still unpaved wilderness. Thus, we have been everywhere on the tour itinerary and we did it without a tour guide except for The Milepost. This 750-page publication, updated annually, describes literally everything you will want to see along the Alaska Highway as well as all the highways connecting directly to it. The Milepost also includes detailed descriptions of all the campgrounds, lodges, and motels so even those of the meanest comprehension might be able to choose where to stay.

   So, in our opinion, there is no need to spend $8,995 to determine your route, what to see and where to stay. But that’s us. We have friends who travel extensively and always take guided tours whether it is to the Caribbean, Europe or the Far East. They find it relieves the stress associated with planning. More importantly, it relieves them of the need to negotiate with each other every single day about what they are going to do. They are quite content to have someone else settle the issue. It works for them and for the millions of other travelers who choose guided tours.   

   We, on the other hand, value the freedom to add or delete things from our itinerary. Before we leave on any excursion, I have invested considerable time choosing the most desirable route based on our preferences. But we are always open to suggestions from other RVers we meet along the way. There is a lot to see in the US and Canada before you even get to Alaska. So we seldom take the shortest or most direct route. Our first Alaska trip put 11,820 miles on the odometer. The second, 12,120.

   No amount of planning, though, can account for all of the variables. On that second trip we detoured  a couple hundred miles because wildfires had blocked our primary homeward route through northern British Columbia. Weather is another significant consideration. Most of the time we deal with meteorological unpleasantness simply by moving on. One October, for example, we planned to visit Colonial Williamsburg, the Outer Banks, and Charleston on the way to our traditional anniversary celebration in Savannah. We were hoping for four or five days at Nags Head but the sky turned black and the wind, like the bully in old Charles Atlas advertising, kept kicking sand in our faces. The forecast called for more of the same so, after only one night, we continued to Charleston then Beaufort and Savannah.

   In winter we are eager to leave gray, dreary Northern Ohio for someplace warm and sunny. As we follow the last of the children and grandchildren out the driveway right after Christmas, Shirley is making one last check to see if there is ice at Jellico Pass. This helps determine whether we will be headed all the way to the end of I-75, where it is reliably warm and sunny, or making detours and layovers along the way? How are things looking for Pensacola, St. Augustine, or Alexander Springs near Ocala where we might spend several days or a week before continuing to the Everglades? Notice that options are built right into the plan. We start out with an itinerary but not necessarily a schedule. Our first objective, whether we are headed to Florida, Arizona or both, is to get as far south as quickly as possible. This generally turns out to be Chattanooga or Atlanta or Birmingham. We expect it to be a little cool on the first night but the RV furnace takes care of that. Besides, we count on it being quite nice (compared to Toledo anyway) by noon the second day.

   For years, our ultimate destination was Everglades National Park. In 2013 we spent January in Florida before following the Gulf Coast around to Texas and then on to Arizona and Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks in Southern California. Fellow RVers suggested a lay-over on the way back east at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, right on the Mexican border. Holy cow! Who knew the desert could be so gorgeous? (Of the four deserts in the US, the Sonoran is known as the green desert for all the flowering cacti and shrubs.) A one night lay-over turned into four before we continued on to Tucson. That was where Shirley declared she was homesick. For Organ Pipe. So we turned around and went back for another week. It is good to be king of the road. Especially if you are smart enough to listen to the queen.

   Until this year, Organ Pipe was our winter destination. You may have heard that the border has been overwhelmed by a couple million refugees. Blending in with them are MS-13 gang members, human traffickers, and drug runners who, according to the CDC, have made fentanyl the leading cause of death among Americans 18 to 45. Shirley and I like the quiet solitude of remote desert locations such as Las Cienegas, Buenos Aires, and Whitewater Draw where security is non-existent. Until last year, that was never an issue. But it is the reason we went to Florida in 2022.

   Forgive that digression. The question is, how long does it take to get to Organ Pipe. The answer is, it depends.

   When we are heading there, which we hope to do when the border issues are settled, the first stop is for a week or so at Gulf Islands National Seashore, just offshore of Pensacola. The beach is powder sugary fine white sand. While there we monitor the long-term weather forecast--even though no forecast is reliable for even 24 hours--for the next stops on the itinerary: Padre Island near Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Big Bend National Park, Cave Creek Canyon, Whitewater Draw, and Tucson.

   Sometimes there are even more stops on an alternate route: the King Ranch, up the Rio Grande through Laredo, Eagle Pass and Del Rio to Judge Roy Bean's place in Langtry--now out of the question. Rt. 9 runs west from El Paso within sight of the border. Also out of the question. I do find it amusing, however, that Pancho Villa, the Mexican bandit pursued by Gen. Black Jack Pershing, now has a New Mexico state park named for him. If I were even a teensie bit cynical, I would suspect that our grandchildren will someday visit El Chapo State Park, named for Joaquin Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel.

People who love peaceful solitude must learn to tolerate the crowds at

Gulf Islands National Seashore.

At least on Padre Island we can camp by ourselves right on the beach.

Just south of Padre is the King Ranch, about the size of New England.

We followed the Rio Grande north to Langtry, TX where Judge Roy Bean's place is not nearly as sexy as depicted in the movies or TV series.

Every visitor to San Antonio is obliged to remember the Alamo. It is also a good idea to visit another half dozen Spanish missions that are within a few miles. 

Cave Creek Canyon, though in Arizona, can be cool because of the elevation. This is an asset in the summer but in winter we check the forecast.

About 30,000 sandhill cranes spend the winter at Whitewater Draw in Arizona. Who could blame them?

The Earps and Clantons are still shooting each other in Tombstone.

At Tucson, we always go to San Xavier del Bac and then have Indian fry bread on the reservation.

In Big Bend National Park the Rio Grande cuts through Santa Elena Canyon. A trail on the American side dead ends at a boulder in the stream.

One of our favorite remote places to boondock is Las Cienegas. Remote and desolate have lost some of their appeal. But we look forward to the day when they will be secure and accessible again.

   So, how long does all that take? Round trip to Organ Pipe by way of the Everglades is more than 8,000 miles. Google Maps says the direct route from Toledo is a little over 2,000 miles with a driving time of 30 hours. But the direct route goes right through Blizzard Central. If you absolutely have to drive to Arizona in a hurry, you might just swallow a bottle of NoDoz, cross your fingers and go like crazy. If your objective is to have a good time, you would probably find the southern route via I-10 through Pensacola, Baton Rouge or New Orleans, Houston, Corpus Christi and San Antonio far more agreeable than I-40 through Amarillo way up in the Panhandle. 

   The "long way" doesn't seem long at all if you break it up with visits to the wonderful places worth seeing between here and there. Homeward bound, we stop at places like Chiricahua and White Sands National Monuments, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and a dozen places along the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway.

    Ah, but there is another fly in the ointment. Though I avoid commitments because they ruin travel flexibility, the huge increase in the number of visitors has caused more national and state parks to require campground reservations. This obviously makes sense in famous Yellowstone or Yosemite but these days you need them even in parks you never heard of. For example, in 2013 on our way from the Everglades to Arizona we stayed four nights at Fort Pickens in Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola and returned there for another week on our way home. Just pulled in, picked a campsite, and registered. Can't do that any more because of the huge increase in the popularity of camping.

   At Organ Pipe, Twin Peaks Campground has never filled since 1937 when the park was established. So far, that is. Historically, a significant percentage of RVers stay there just a night or two on their way to the resort town of Puerto Penasco on the Sea of Cortez. Even so, in all its bureaucratic wisdom, the National Park Service decided that requiring reservations sounded like a great idea. After we arrived in 2021, a ranger came to tell us about the new policy and suggest we log on to recreation.gov to book the campsite we were already occupying. Too late! Somebody had already rented it right out from under us. There were still plenty of other options but we had to hop scotch around the campground every few days. Just picking a site and staying in it for the duration was impossible. 

   The definition of “for the duration” has changed as well. When dealing directly with rangers at Everglades or Organ Pipe, we could stay as long as we wanted regardless of the official limit of 14 days. They knew we weren’t going to cause them any grief. (Well, Shirley wouldn’t so they made allowances for me.) And it was better for them to get $10 a night from us (with my geezer pass) than to get $0 for an empty site. Besides, they seemed to enjoy casually dropping by just at cocktail hour. But you can’t sweet talk the computer at recreation.gov if the algorithm insists you're out in 14 days. Fortunately, Shirley also has a senior pass so, between the two of us, we can still get a month. 

   So, how long does it take to drive all that way to Organ Pipe? Last time it was 46 days but we spent those 46 days in really nice places so it was still just a walk in the park. This winter we headed back to Florida and will continue to do so until the situation on the southern border is remedied. The question for us is not "how long does it take to get there?" but "how long will it take to fix the border?" Meanwhile, our first stop in Alexander Springs, FL is less than two days away.