One year ago Sharon and I bought one way tickets to a far northern town in Norway. We had planned to spend four-ish months bicycle touring throughout Norway, the UK and Europe. It was an exciting few months of planning. However, as happened to so many plans last year, Covid intervened and the trip never happened. Insert your favorite frowny face emoji here. C’est la Vie! Fast forward one year. In a fever of irrational optimism, Sharon and I once again bought one-way tickets to the far north! This time to Alaska. That’s right. Hope springs eternal in the face of experience which proves otherwise. Some of you may have seen Sharon’s post on Facebook. Since we’ve gotten quite a few questions, I thought I’d provide a little background to our decision, and some insight into our plans.

A while back I spent some time wandering down a rabbit hole. I tried to imagine what life would look like if we sold everything! Sell the house, get rid of all the furniture and furnishings, extra vehicles – basically everything. What would life look like free from all the ties that bind, with extra cash in the bank? It was fun to imagine. What would you do? Well, it was an interesting thought, but really nothing more than a fanciful exercise in “what if?” I filed the thoughts away. Some time later I mentioned the idea to Sharon. She found the idea…intriguing. That led to countless hours playing the “could we/should we/would we/what if?” game. It was fun. It was scary. It was exciting! Eventually we decided that getting rid of everything was too great a leap – and ultimately unnecessary. Instead, we came up with an intermediate step – and our current plan. A wonderful young couple, Jack and Abby, has agreed live in our house for a year (+), look after things and manage our Airbnb. Freed from the responsibility of managing hearth and home, we will use the time to indulge our wanderlust.

Which leads back to one-way tickets to Alaska. Sometime mid-April of this year (2021), we will hand over the keys to Jack and Abby and leave Flagstaff with trailer and toys in tow. We will gradually make our way to the Seattle area by the end of May, and then fly to Anchorage with our bicycles and camping gear. With a population density of 1.2 people per square mile, Alaska seems like the perfect place to practice anti-social distancing. Having lived in AK for a time, I know that there are several lifetimes of exploring possible there. If the Canadian border opens this summer, our plan is to bicycle back to Washington. Worst case scenario is that the border remains closed and we will just spend a few months biking and hiking around my old stomping grounds before flying or ferrying back to Washington.

We hope the Alaska to Washington bike ride comes to pass. After that, plans are a bit vague. Before the arrival of winter, we’d like to spend some time back in the Wisconsin homeland. There are quite a few places we’d like to bicycle, kayak, hike and camp around the country. We’d like to visit family and friends. Once winter hits, we’ve talked about spending the long northern winter bicycle touring in southern hemisphere countries or tropical regions. This far out, those are all just fun ideas to kick around. Given all the uncertainty in the world, and just life in general, it seems foolish to spend too much planning at this point.

So there it is is. That’s our “no plan – plan”. We’re currently trying to have fun and stay in shape. We are also working hard at finishing home projects (mostly me) and steadily packing and clearing space for our caretakers (mostly Sharon). Turns out there is a long “to do” list when you’re going to be away for an extended period of time. Fortunately there are plenty of adventurous folks who have travelled this path before us and have left excellent “roadmaps” for us to follow. Also we live in a digital age and managing life from a distance is vastly easier than in years past. That’s all for now! We’re looking forward to getting on the road. We’re looking forward to you taking the journey with us (virtually). And, depending on where you are, hopefully our paths will cross!