The town of Homer describes itself as the ‘quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem’. Or at least that is what the bumper stickers at the brewery said. There is indeed a lot of fishing going on in the area. Everywhere you look someone is offering Halibut Charters. But we weren’t there to fish.
It is not every day when you find yourselves locked out of your vehicle in the middle of bear country, surrounded by hungry mosquitos, rain clouds threatening and several miles from civilization. At least we hope it’s not. We’ve learned our lesson… we hope.
Our flight arrived into Anchorage shortly after midnight. As we had flown north it had become gradually lighter and lighter, so that by the time we were coming in to land we could see the rugged snowcapped peaks receding into the twilight. The excitement was building—we were finally arriving in Alaska.
Not wanting to skip the key tourist spots while we were in Arizona, we stopped by the Grand Canyon and the Barringer Meteor Crater to look at two of the largest holes in the ground we are likely to see on our travels.
The main reason we stopped for 10 days in Arizona was so that we could drive up to Flagstaff to attend Overland Expo 2014. For those who haven’t heard of Overland Expo (we hadn’t until we started planning this trip). It is a gathering of people who like to go adventuring in their vehicles. Whether those be 4WDs, motorbikes, or massive post-apocolyptic survival vehicles.
The USA—it’s like New Zealand, only the junk food is cheaper and they drive on the right (wrong) side of the road. Also, for some reason they have these crazy four way stops where a roundabout would have been a good option. Although Ben seems to be warming to these after a few weeks of driving.
It can be hard saying goodbye to the hairiest of family members.
After three years of saving and planning (probably not quite enough of either) the day finally came to leave on our journey. In the weeks leading up to this it was time to say goodbye, to friends, family, pets, places and all things familiar.
So, where do you plan on going? Um. From Deadhorse, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina… At some point it becomes necessary to pad out the details between those two places. We feel that the time to do that will probably be when we are already on the road.
As you saw in Part One: Not winning the lottery we aren’t especially awesome at saving. But due to the fact that we have not as yet won the lottery it has proven to be the only way that we can afford a trip like the one we have planned. Saving money is far from being glamorous. It is actually rather dull. To be honest, we wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t tricked ourselves into it. So here follows our Top 10 tips to trick yourself into saving: