Last Frontier road trip

Hi Jamie,

I stumbled across your website as I was searching the web for road trip ideas, destinations and plans. My wife and I will be celebrating our first anniversary this fall, and since we didn't get a chance to go on a honeymoon earlier, would like to plan some sort of special trip.

Thoughts of tropical paradises have originally intrigued us, but after looking at our budget, and have reality set in, the thought of going on a road trip entered my mind. We both live in south central Alaska, and enjoy traveling very much, though she has unfortunately not had many chances to travel out of state to see much of the lower 48. I don't suppose you might have any thoughts / advice for a trip that would originate / end in Alaska? I looked at your routes, and the border to border and pacific coast trips interested me the most. Perhaps driving one down, and the other back home would be good.

Any advice on these? Good times of the year? Does / don'ts? etc.

Thanks!

~Joe

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Dear Joe --

Many thanks for your nice note. Congrats on your first year of marriage!

I would strongly recommend you make your way to the Canadian Rockies, which are very very pretty indeed. And if you could make it far as the rest of the USA, I suspect you would really like the look of the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Peninsula region in far western Washington state, or cruising all the way down the Pacific coast to California (my home state).

Summer will get you the best weather in most of these places, but autumn (Sept / Oct) is usually very nice and much less crowded. And if you could find the time to come back via Montana, I think you'd enjoy that part of the country, too. The Bitterroot Valley, the Sawtooth Mountains (seen above in a postcard image), and Glacier National Park, are all truly spectacular.

All these places make great destinations for a special trip -- and one thing I thought is that you might want to check out the many good books written by my friend and Banff-based collaborator, Andrew Hempstead, who covers British Columbia, Alberta, Alaska and the Yukon (and sometimes his native Australia, too). He has written dozens of books and articles, including most of the Rockies sections of my Road Trip USA books, and now has his own Canadian Rockies publishing company, summerthought.

Finally, you asked for some does and don'ts. How about these:


Do take the trip. Don't put it off.


I don't know how much all of this will help you plan your honeymoon, but hope you have a nice one.

With best wishes,


Jamie Jensen
--
Road Trip USA