Wild Places and Open Spaces

It’s been months of hard work fixing up and selling our house, buying necessary gear (and perhaps some not so necessary) for the trip, packing our possessions (not to mention getting rid of truckloads of garbage one tends to accumulate over time). It truly is quite amazing the ‘stuff’ we save ‘just in case’. Hopefully when we return from this trip we can simplify our lives greatly.

Disconnecting ourselves from ‘normal’ society proves more difficult than it may sound. I swear we are hooked up intravenously to the system and need government approval to detatch ourselves from each money tube. Cancel this insurance, get that insurance, cancel that direct debit, post date checks for storage, arrange debit for credit cards, cancel cable, phone, hydro, electricity, gas, house insurance and the list goes on. Arrange airline tickets, get innoculations, buy visas-yes I said buy-you have to buy the privilege of visiting some countries. We needed to do all our dentistry get all our prescriptions, see the eye doctor, arrange travel insurance and CAA. On top of all that we naturally needed to plan our trip in fair detail. Anyway, I’m sure you all get the picture…it’s been a lot of work but on the bright side this winter just whipped by!!!

Quite a few people have querried how we are managing to do this trip…No we didn’t win the lottery. Anyone can do a world tour depending on a few things. Our criteria was, having no dependent children, having $50,000-$60,000 in equity (which we gained through the sale of our home), willingness to part with that hard earned equity, losing one whole years wages, Kristin willing to quit her job, myself getting a leave of absence, willing to camp (a lot), and eating peanutbutter sandwiches for one whole year. Keeping away from restaurants and hotels saves a bundle! Eating at restaurants adds up quickly…$25 per person per day X 365 days = $18,250, hotels add up fast as well, $75 X 365 = $27,375! We hope to do the whole trip, including fees accrued at home for $50,000. Our main expenses on the road being gasoline, food, camping and airfare but you need to include travel insurance, car ferries, life insurance, CAA, park passes and many other miscellaneous things. At home we still have car payments, storage facilities, car insurance and content insurance. One small note of interest…Anybody can purchase an around the world trip ticket for under $4000 per person, giving you as many as a dozen stops for up to a period of one year! Check AirTreks for details.

Our intentions on this journey are to travel to the Southwestern U.S. to do some desert hiking and see all the touristy hot spots like the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Bryce Canyon, etc. etc. then travel west through the Mountains to the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and hike some of the Giant Redwood forests of upstate California, Oregon and Washington. Next ferry over to Vancouver Island and spend a little time exploring the island before we embark on another ferry-the original Queen of The North sunk in March of 2006-up the inside passage to Prince Rupert B.C. We then plan to drive up around to Skagway and hopefully set sail on yet another ferry-sans car-to Sitka, Juneau and perhaps Haines. Then head up to Alaska and the Yukon for a couple months and perhaps do a little fishing ;-). On our way home we expect to travel through Banff and Jasper then Glacier and Yellowstone before heading East. A quick stop at Mount Rushmore and perhaps the Badlands briefly, then home for mid September. Our second leg should begin at the end of September when we’ll fly (for $4100 p.p.) to Honolulu – Kona – Honolulu – Sydney, Australia – Aukland, New Zealand – Nadi, Fiji – Apia, Samoa – L.A. – and Home by the end of April providing of course we were lucky enough to avoid Grizzlies, Rattlesnakes, Scorpions, Black Widows, Ferry sinkings and the like in North America and all the poisonous critters of Australia; Funnelweb spiders, several of the most venomous snakes in the world, Box Jellyfish, Great White Sharks, Blue Ringed Octopi, Cone Shells, poisonous Ants and Crocodiles-just to mention a handful. Then *gulp* back to work for the start of May…let’s not talk about that right now though.

For years I’ve dreamt about travelling the world and I still can’t believe we’re actually about to do it! Somehow it’s difficult to fathom a year away from home – heck the longest time I’ve been on the road is five weeks and the longest Kris has been is two! Although we already know most of our destinations and the distances we’ll cover we don’t really know where this trip of a lifetime will lead us. We would be happy if all we accomplished by this trip was to serve as inspiration to all the regular Joes in this world that we can all dream big! It’s exciting to think we’ll live so basic for the next year. I wonder if we’ll be happy to get home or if we’ll love the freedom of being somewhat poor and nomadic? One thing is for sure we’ll miss all of our friends, workmates and family. We won’t on the other hand miss being slaves to our property and belongings – which we have none of the first and little of the latter I might add!

I’d like to thank Lear Corp., Mike Walkowski, Ed Broderick, Ernie McKean and everyone else involved in re-writing company policy in order to give us this opportunity to explore the world and ourselves. Thanks to Stacey Gray and Dave MacDonald for their expert help in getting our affairs settled before we left. Thanks to all our friends, family and workmates for all their encouragement, wellwishes, generosity, casting off parties, dinners and gifts. And most of all we thank our parents for all their love and support, handling all our affairs while we’re away and letting us live with them and taking up a lot of their private space until we leave and when we get back because it would have been difficult to pull this off otherwise. We love you…

We’ll try to keep everybody updated once a month or so depending on availability of web access. Please feel free to E-mail us; we’d appreciate hearing from everybody while we’re on the road.

Days on the road so far – 0

Distance Travelled – 0km

Money Spent so far – $0 not including cameras and cartop carrier…

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.