2015 was a great year of travel in the Airstream, leaving home just after the first of the year with our house rented out.
After a January and February loop down the east side of the Sierras to the Alabama Hills, Trona Pinnacles and Mojave National Preserve, we came back up the coast, hanging out at Refugio State Beach near Santa Barbara before stopping in the Bay Area for a couple weeks. (1,506 miles)
In March, we headed up through the Pacific Northwest hitting Ashland, Crater Lake, Bend, Smith Rocks and the Painted Hills in Oregon and into Washington for to see friends in Seattle, take a rally-racing class in Snoqualmie, and explore the Olympic Peninsula and Pt. Townsend in April. (1,203 miles)
After a ferry ride into Canada, May was spent on Vancouver Island checking out places like Tofino, meeting family in Vancouver and driving north up the remote Cassiar Highway through British Columbia, of course with a side trip out to the Bear and Salmon Glaciers near Hyder, Alaska down in the panhandle. (1,704 miles)
In June, we crossed into Southeast Alaska at Skagway and ferried down to Juneau before connecting via the Haines Highway back up into the Yukon. We hit the summer solstice at our northernmost point in Fairbanks and then wound south with visits to Denali National Park, Talkeetna and Anchorage. (1,205 miles)
We spent the 4th of July on the Kenai Peninsula in Girdwood, camped up in the Portage Valley and stopped into the great little town of Hope and then flew home to the Bay Area to see family for a couple weeks. Returning in late July, we made it all the way down to Homer for a rendezvous with other travelers, caught the Salmonfest music fest in Ninilchik and crossed over to Seward before loading onto a ferry to Valdez for an amazing helicopter flight over the Columbia Glacier. (703 miles)
On the way out of Alaska in August, we had an incredible time in McCarthy, enjoying the quirky town, exploring the abandoned mines and walking on the glacier before cutting up onto the Top of the World Highway through Chicken and on to Dawson City in the Yukon. Our southward route through BC took us farther east to hit Liard Hot Springs and Muncho Lake on the way to the end of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek. (1988 miles)
By September, we were coming down through Jasper National Park, the Icefields Parkway, and Banff and Waterton National Parks to cross back into the lower 48 for the first time in 4 months. We had a great time in Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, but at some point we really needed to start heading east... (1980 miles)
...But not before stops at the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, the Badlands, Devil's Tower, Custer State Park and Mt. Rushmore. The rest of October was a bit of a blast eastward through southern Minnesota, a fun stop in Madison and a secret 24 hour mission (details to come) home from Chicago, visits with Instagram friends and a tour of the Airstream Factory at Jackson Center, and stops in Amish country. (3078 miles)
Incredible Fall foliage ushered us the rest of the way to a little town about 45 minutes west of Boston where we'd park the Airstream in Ann's brother's backyard where we'd perfect the finer points of "moochdocking" while spending November with family and an end to a 14,631 mile adventure!
In December, we winterized the trailer and flew back out to CA to experiment with a weekend of "vanlife" while reuniting with some overlanders, visited our home base in Petaluma and caught up friends and will enjoy the holidays and the end of the year with family in Tahoe.
