Getting started.........

Lots to do this week in prep for the trip. We leave Monday May 2nd. Visits to Walmart, Camping World and Home Depot are in order, sigh. But I love Debbie's approach, lets just hit the road and pick things up along the way as needed - we may end up adopting this strategy, seems sound to me, right?
Basic things like vehicle maintenance and buttoning things up at home are well underway and will be completed.
The general itinerary is to travel up the coast of CA, OR and WA the month of May with visits to friends/family in Monterey, CA; Medford, OR and Orcas Island, WA. We plan on spending a lot of time visiting places we have not been such as the Oregon coast and Olympic NP in WA.
We plan on crossing the US/Canadian border right after Memorial Day and spending the month of June traveling thru BC and Yukon for a July 4th arrival in AK. On the way we plan to visit Hyder, Skagway, Haines, McCarthy and Valdez before getting to Anchorage.
My sister Sue from Boston will be meeting us in Anchorage the first week in July to travel with us in the LD for 2 weeks. After her arrival we all head off to Denali NP Teklanika Campground by way of the Denali Highway for a few days and then back to Anchorage to meet my brother Mark and his wife Kim and son Blake. They are renting an RV for a week and we all head off to the Kenai Peninsula for a week of glacier hiking, fjord boat tours, whitewater rafting and whatever other trouble we can find. I'm really looking forward to touring along with all of these great and fun people.
Then Debbie and I head north to Fairbanks and slowly meander and depart AK sometime mid to late August. We will spend about 4 weeks getting back home by way of the BC Okanagan Valley and eastern WA and OR.
Phew....what a trip!
OK, so this is my first experience with a blog. My reasons are two fold - to give family and friends a way to keep up with us if interested and to develop a travel diary for our future reference. I will try to update it regularly so please check in from time to time if you want to keep tabs on us, we'd LOVE to hear from you!
In testing the photo insert operation I've included a photo from a trip we took to San Felipe in Baja back in February below.

Hey, it works!