Daydreaming Sunday

It is Sunday Morning. My wife is travelling on business, and I got the kids to take care of. But that is not a bad thing as you might think, I actually have the full liberty of doing whatever I want with them and they do as well. For example, they can sleep in as long as they want. The older is doing just that (I do not mind) and the younger just had a bowl of cereal with me. So now I can finish my second cup of coffee and write something for the #weekend-engagement. I have never written here before, but I know of its existence from the very beginning and I am an avid follower. Although, I don't comment or engage majority of the time, mostly due to time constraints, but I do keep in touch with @galenkp on a regular basis. Congratulation to Galen and the community for the two year anniversary.

Imaginary Trip

On to the trip I was day dreaming. I shared this map with Galen earlier about a trip maybe someday I might take, on a RV from my hometown Houston, TX to Anchorage, AK. Below is the screenshot from my laptop. Those stars that you see on my google are are not just the places I have been (I don't mark the spots, just for the sake of marking), the marked points are places of interest that I have been multiple times and just used for driving directions. This is a random footprint of my places of interest in the US. Again it is NOT a list of places that I have been. If I plot those the map will be quite a bit full to see anything of interest anyways. It is just a random of more frequented places that I visit rather regularly. The point of this rambling is the fact that you can immediately see that I visit western US more often, and do not visit eastern parts at all. That is quite true. I rarely visit east of the continental divide of the US. Also I visit Alaska a lot! This is quite true as well (you are getting a glimpse of my traveling habits within the US). Also there are no 'stars' on Canada, although I have been there, but mostly shorts trips around Calgary and Vancouver, and mostly business trips. Airport and business hotels are all that I have seen in Canada. So Canada remains largely unexplored for me.

So I was thinking, since I enjoy Alaska so much, and never really been to Canada in any meaningful way, when kids leave for college, maybe my wife and I can make a trip across the continent of North America. It is nearly 4200 miles long trip, and likely will have many detours, and that will give us a good understanding of this continent.

The US part of the drive I have done multiple times before, from Texas to Colorado to Wyoming to Montana, all the way to the southern border of Canada. I used to do some field work around Glacier National Park, MT, so I used to frequent there as a student.

This is North Fork of Teton River, in the Distrubed Belt Montana (there is nothing disturbing about the disturbed belt, its very peaceful!), just south of the Glacier National Park, where my wife and I used to do some mapping :) Brings back a lot of memory. I will be sure to visit this old field area of ours. That ranch property you see in the middle of picture, used to be owned by a gentle natured, kind Montana Mountain Man :) He offered us to stay there for free :) I don't know if the gentleman is still around now, probably won't be in 10 years, when I plan on doing this trip for sure. He was in his late 60s back then, about 16-18 years backs when I last saw him!

However, North of the US-Canadian border is unknown territory for me, and nearly unlimited adventure awaits. It is Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada that I wanted to visit for a long time. I might not wait 10 years to do that. Recently my nephew moved to Edmonton, CA to study and I might visit him soon enough. Hopefully next summer will be good time to do that trip. So that I will have some familiarity around the southern part of the route around Alberta.

Still there is a lot of land between Alberta to Alaska, where I re-enter my familiar country again. But I am seriously looking forward to the drives through upper British Columbia and Yukon. Such a wonderful history of Native Americans and then Gold Rush there! That part alone could take months. So perhaps it is better for me to start from Calgary, and skip the US part, as that is something I have done many times. I am not sure what I will do, but it is excellent to daydream about it!

Damn!! That is still 3400 miles!! Isn't North America BIG!

Happy weekend, folks!