May 21:, Day -56

Plans and preparations are progressing with 56 days to go before our scheduled departure. Here are some highlights.

We're still undecided about the route we will take to Alaska. The options are:

1- Start the 2011 trip all over again and head from DC up to Maine, then through New Brunswick to Nova Scotia, hop a ferry to Newfoundland and then another to Labrador (Port Sablon, Quebec, actually), drive the 1300-mile dirt and gravel Trans-Labrador Highway counter-clockwise to Northwest River, Labrador, which is the end of the road in the northeast, head to Alaska and then to the end of the 500-mile dirt and gravel haul road in the northwest at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 8060 miles in total, and then figure out how to get back to DC. This was the original trip (16,600 miles) planned in 2011, but we had to cut that trip short at Thunder Bay, Ontario because of  Leben’s terrible skin allergy and the Defender’s (false) overheating problem.

2- Head from DC up through Maine to New Brunswick, hop a ferry to Tadoussac, Quebec,  head to Prudhoe Bay Alaska via Chibogamu Quebec, 6087 miles in total, and then figure out how to get back to DC.

3. Basically pick up where we left off on last year’s trip at Thunder Bay, Ontario by heading directly to Thunder Bay via the east coast of Lake Superior, head northwest via Banff in the Canadian Rockies and then to Alaska via one of the few routes there, 5022 miles in total, and then figure out how to get home from there.  

The only deadline I have for the trip is to be at Denali park by September 13^th in case we win the lottery to drive the 80 miles back to Wonder Lake, assuming there isn’t three feet of snow.  If I win the lottery, my guess is that we will take option 3, but we will not know that until days before we leave in July.