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| Cindy and Ira on 1st day of Retirement |
Ira and I are not your usual kind of people as we very much keep to ourselves. That also translates into how we like to travel and spend vacations. We gravitate toward solitude and would rather carry lunches in a backpack versus go out to eat lunch regularly. We would rather eat in, than eat out; hike a trail vs. ride a train; cook and clean up vs. order out! We like less vs. more people. Not that we don't enjoy people, but we'd just like to limit our encounters as we just like to focus on our natural surroundings. Our happiest memories of vacations have been hiking, biking, sightseeing in more off-the-beaten-track areas with our backpack or car full of food and all we needed for the day and just go! Just us! We completely enjoy each other's company! Nuff said!
These factors we carefully considered in planning for our trips.
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| Ira and Cindy on a winter camping trip at Chimney Pond at Mt. Katahdin, Maine (yes a week in the winter!) |
Drive to Alaska - This was an option in that we truly love road trips when we can go where we want, when we want and see what we want. I (Cindy) really don't care for the flying scene anymore - crowds, hurry, hurry, planes, etc. BUT, Alaska is a very, very long way. We would love to see the land between here and there someday. But, for this trip, we simply just did not want to be away from home that long (oh, yes; we are avid home bodies, too). We also considered driving to Seattle and flying the rest of the way. But, once again, that seemed so out of the way as our destination was Alaska.
Train-Drive or Fly or Cruise- Again, taking a train from Montreal to Vancouver was a possible option. From there we'd drive, fly or cruise to Alaska. However, our focus of interest in Alaska was more the central-south area and not so much the south-eastern area. So the drive or cruise would take yet more time beyond the 4+ days by train from Montreal. And, the cost of the train was very, very high!
Cruise- The easiest way seemed to be a cruise. Book it and everything was taken care of; flight, accommodations, itinerary and even luggage. But, that was in fact the problem with the cruise as we tend to be spontaneous when we travel and never want to go where everyone else wants to go. As a rule, we run in the opposite direction as everyone else. And then there would be the fact that we don't want to dress up at all (I truly have an aversion to dressing up in good clothes since I retired! ) and don't want to sit down to dinner with 1,500 people - remember, we are the food in our backpack people. So, we knew we just wouldn't fit in to the cruise scene. Oh, by the way, I (Cindy) was on one cruise in my life and did not like it for all of those same reasons.
Fly - This was always the most viable option and I (Cindy) tried everything to get out of it. Now let me be clear; I'm not a total anti-flying freak, but I do not like to anymore. My last flying experience was not a good one and I haven't flown in years. Couple that with a train trip I took a few years ago, in which it was marvelous and I was treated like a real customer by Amtrak (a customer, right?), flying just seems un-fun!
BUT, we ultimately came down to flying as being our only solution to getting to Alaska withing a reasonable budget and in a reasonable amount of time. However, we did decide that we would fly first class (can you believe it???). This decision wasn't all that hard to make because:
1- we living extremely frugally and have never taken a trip such as this (we barely leave Middlesex, Vermont anymore,
2-we've worked hard all of our lives and have saved for this very day post retirement,
3- it's a really long flight;
4- because we booked so early we actually got some really good rates;
5- we opted to stay in places Alaska that we'd be making our own meals and we'd save money there.
Bottom line, we did it because we wanted to! I'll tell you later if it was worth it.
1- we living extremely frugally and have never taken a trip such as this (we barely leave Middlesex, Vermont anymore,
2-we've worked hard all of our lives and have saved for this very day post retirement,
3- it's a really long flight;
4- because we booked so early we actually got some really good rates;
5- we opted to stay in places Alaska that we'd be making our own meals and we'd save money there.
Bottom line, we did it because we wanted to! I'll tell you later if it was worth it.
These were the main decisions for how we were going to travel to get to Alaska.
