THE TRIP CONTINUES

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  Chicago, Illinois, United States
Sunday, June 28, 2009

It has been about a year since we returned to Chicago - July 2nd 2008 to be exact. We stayed put for about two months then headed out to Baniff-Lake Louise, Vancouver, and then San Diego.

Once back in San Diego we removed much of the equipment from the jeep and placed it in storage. We then headed out to Europe for a little over a month returning to Chicago in the first week of Nov. We left again on Nov. 20th to head to Houston to visit son and daughter-in-law and their new home, which was great. Thence to San Diego for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Carol headed back to Antiqua, Guatemala in early January for a two week immersion course in Spanish while I suffered alone in San Diego. We both ended up in Chicago by the first part of Feb. and here we have stayed for the most part - with several excursions to San Diego, planning my 70th birthday party (it was a great party with tons of family and friends) and our finally completing our drive of the Pan Am hightway. We leave Tuesday for San Diego where we will have the jeep reshod i.e. new tires and give it a complete health check up. Then it will go to Off Road Warehouse to be completely rerigged for the trip. When those two steps are done we will pack the jeep with all the necessary equipment including an increased supply of emergency food. Seems Carol has read an article about the Dalton Highway - the final 430 odd miles from Faribanks to Prudhoe Bay which recommends carrying a two week supply of food to help you through the odd summer blizzard. We will compromise and carry 4 or 5 days. If all goes as planned, we will leave San Diego on July 6th and return on August 12th or there abouts. We will drive the Alcan highway to Fairbanks and then the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay. Our return trip will include Denali National Park and trips by ferry down the Inside Passage visiting places like Juneau, Sitka, Ketichan, etc. We hope to meet many interesting people and take a ton of pictures of moose, grizzly( from a distance), elk, etc. The next entry should be from Canada.