McBerkoBlog

I wrote about our RV previously  here , but in this post, I'll focus on the cost. Why? Like with my previous post about our Guatemala trip costs , I'm hoping this info can help others plan since it's hard to accurately estimate travel costs. This was our first time renting an RV and I was not sure what the final costs would be compared to the initial estimates shown on the rental sites. In the end, renting the RV was 100% the best choice for us on this trip and saved us money compared to the alternatives. The total for our RV including gas and campgrounds was just over $4,000 for 8 nights. Whew! That's more than our entire month in Guatemala, and doesn't include food, flights, and activities. Alaska, amirite?! Let's break it down: RV Rental = ~$3,250 Base fee = $2,537 This was for a 28 foot RV with two slide-outs, and the rental included unlimited mileage. We owed a deposit of $634 upfront and the rest at pickup. Options: Six camping/lawn chairs = $90. We never...

It was finally time to turn in the RV. We'd showered and packed the night before, but got up early so we wouldn't have to rush through breakfast, coffee, and our final RV cleaning. We left a few items in the campground bathroom hoping to donate them to a good home, and cleared out the rest. An hour's drive and gas top-off later, we arrived back at the RV rental place exactly 1 minute before our return time. We anxiously awaited their approval (no extra charges, yay!), then hopped on their free shuttle to the airport, where Jim and Mary had an early afternoon flight.  We made it! And found a stick! We McBs had another 10+ hours before our flight home, so grabbed the Anchorage PeopleMover bus straight from the airport to downtown. We ended up with about 3 hours before the drizzle turned into rain, giving us enough time to eat a picnic lunch at the Elderberry Park playground near the water, walk through a bit of the Coastal Trail, see several monuments and city parks, wander t...

The second to last day of our trip, we had a relaxed travel day back south with the goal of ending up somewhere near enough to Anchorage for us to turn in the RV on time the next morning. Jim did some fishing (no luck), we had a leisurely breakfast in our boondocked RV, and wondered when exactly a huge moose pooped so close to our RV during the night.  Fishing by our boondocked RV We didn't have a campground reserved for the night, but knowing that Anchorage campgrounds are primarily super expensive parking lots, we decided to stop 45 mins north in Wasilla. The city might be best known as the hometown of Sarah Palin, and it was covered with Palin signs. We later learned that Alaska was holding elections this Tuesday (Palin lost). In more entertaining news, Wasilla is also home to the Iditarod Headquarters and Museum. The Iditarod is a long-distance sled dog race covering over 900 miles in 8+ days. The headquarters had dog houses but no dogs visible during our visit, so we looked ar...

Monday, 8/15 was our Fairbanks day, which started with a three hour tour on the Riverboat Discovery . We lucked out with another beautiful, sunny day, so we found seats on the open deck at the front of the boat. As the boat headed out, the guide talked about how important planes are for life here, and then a bush pilot demoed a water landing near the boat.  We also stopped at the riverbank where a late dog sled racing champion lived, where her family still lives and runs a kennel. They had a live conversation with the owner who showed how the dogs train in the summer.  The bulk of the tour was spent on shore at the Chena Village Living Museum, a reproduction of an Athabascan village. The tour guides explained how people lived and survived here, including how they processed salmon, made canoes, and kept warm. They also explained that the summer growing season for food is great in Alaska due to how much daylight they get. Some huge veggies up here! We had time to wander freely a...

On Sunday, 8/14, we headed back to the Denali Visitor Center to take a ranger-led hike to Horseshoe Lake. The ranger was both informative and funny. We learned that bears love soapberries, and that those berries taste about as good as you'd think. We also learned that moose can swim, dive to eat aquatic plants, and hold their breath for a full minute. Sadly, we weren't lucky enough to see a moose in this lake. The ranger said it sometimes pops up to the surface and surprises people like an Alaskan Loch Ness monster.  We also saw the beaver dams in the lake and were surprised to see how far the beavers traveled up the steep hills around the lake for wood. It was quite the trek up for us - I wonder why the beavers go so far uphill.  Overall, this was another beautiful hike, 4 miles, much steeper in parts than any of the other trails we did here. Between the scenery and the ranger's info, it was my favorite of our Denali hikes. After a quick lunch in the RV, we headed over to ...

Saturday 8/13 was our full day in Denali, and we packed in as much as we could. It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too cold, and no bugs outside of the campground. We hiked three trails, visited the sled dogs, and saw some animals during the shuttle bus rides. In Denali, there's a single road through the park. Cars are prohibited most of the way but free shuttles run along the first 15 miles. The park also runs long sightseeing bus tours for a fee, but since the road was still blocked completely after mile 43 due to a landslide, we decided instead to spend the day hiking and visiting the sled dogs. We packed some water and lunch, then hopped on a shuttle to the visitor center to check out the exhibits and snag some park brochures and trail maps .  From there, we took the free shuttle bus to the Savage River Loop trailhead. The signs noted that food was prohibited on the trail (don't attract those grizzlies!), so we ate our lunches before starting. This was a beautiful trail! Th...

Friday, August 12 was a travel day to get from Seward up north to Denali, >350 miles. We had breakfast in the RV as usual, then decided to make one stop before heading out - a hike to see Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. This was the best glacier opportunity on our itinerary so we couldn't pass it up, even though it was rainy and cold. We started on the Glacier View Loop Trail then decided to continue onto the Glacier Overlook Trail. Might as well, we were already soaked! The loop was a short, easy hike, but we were scrambling over rocks and jumping streams on the overlook trail.  Signs are posted along the entire trail showing where the glacier had been in different years, making it inescapably obvious how far it's receded over time.  At one point, we came across a viewing platform that used to overlook the glacier itself and now just looked into the forest, no glacier in sight.  After the hike, everyone changed into dry clothes and we started our drive no...

Our big activity for this Thursday was a cruise of Resurrection Bay at 12:30, so we decided to fill our morning with a visit to the Alaska Sealife Center . It's a fun small aquarium focused on local animals, a great place to get a close look at some of the animals we were hoping to see later that afternoon from the boat. We especially loved the seals and sea lions here, as well as the large touch pools with anemones, sea urchin, and starfish.  Next, we headed over to the harbor for the cruise with  Major Marine tours , a 4 hour wildlife viewing cruise. The boat had two levels, each glassed in and filled with tables. You could move around as much as you wanted in the open areas, but you were assigned a specific booth for your seat. The top level had open decks on all sides, but our bottom level had open space only at the front and back. We quickly realized that the back deck area both reeked of diesel and was incredibly loud from the motors, so the uncovered lower front deck be...

Bear with me, folks, I will eventually finish all my planned posts from our Alaska trip! We woke on Wednesday, 8/10 to a chilly but clear morning, so bundled up and walked through the adjacent campground to find Coopers Lake. Near the path, we saw tons of hilariously cartoonish, bright red mushrooms. Jim fished while we drank our coffee on the shore, then we explored a bit, wandering to the other side of the lake where Bill found the (very stinky) skeleton of a large fish and Ruth practiced skipping stones. Next up, we headed to the Russian River so Jim could fly fish for salmon. It's a popular destination for salmon fishing, enough so that we had to park in overflow parking. Bill and I dropped off the others near the trailhead, then went back to the overflow parking with the RV and hiked back up to meet them at the river. The trail near the river was beautiful - raised foot path over the foliage with frequent exits to the shallow, rocky river. Bill and I eventually found the other...

We started our morning by packing up and walking over to breakfast at Kava's Pancake House, where Zadie again was excited to see that she could get bacon with her kid's breakfast meal. (Not a vegetarian, that one.) Next, we visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center . This place was very cool and informative, with a stage in the center, a movie theater, a lake surrounded by replicas of native homes, and a "hall of cultures" with artists, vendors, and artifacts. We arrived right as a dance performance had started, with singing, drums, and about 7 dancers, mostly young women. While everyone else watched that full performance (which Zadie tired of after a few songs), Zadie and I watched a movie about how kayaks and canoes were made by hand (wow). We then all toured the villages outside to walk through the six replica homes showing how various native people lived in the different environments and cultures of Alaska. Before we left, we watched a final movie together called ...

Next up, we headed to Alaska! This trip was a lifelong dream of Bill's dad, Jim, and we were excited to experience Alaska with him and Bill's sister, Mary. Major props to Mary for organizing so much of this trip! 👏👏👏 Our travel day happened to fall on Zadie's 6th birthday! We'd celebrated with family over the weekend so she wasn't feeling super "birthday girl" this day. Or maybe she was just tired - my cheap flights had us waking up at 2:45 a.m. for an early departure. We ended up scrambling when several ride share attempts fell through, eventually driving ourselves to the airport. Apparently not many drivers on the road that early (/late?) on a Monday morning! We landed in Dallas just after 7:00 a.m. and then had about 9 hours to kill before our next flight. Bill and the girls had never been to Texas, so we spent the day in downtown Dallas. The DART train took us directly from the airport to downtown Dallas, very convenient. We had lots o' coffee a...

Now that we've been home from Guatemala for several weeks, we sat down over sushi and discussed what we missed (food, culture, environment) vs. what we weren't as sad to leave behind (some convenience and health factors). Things We Miss Food! We ate so much great food on our trip. The prices were low enough that we could eat out frequently, and there were so many options that we didn't even visit all the restaurants we hoped to. For such a small town, there was a wide variety of international cuisine, and we mixed those with plenty of traditional Guatemalan options. We enjoyed a lot of Guatemalan coffee too, and I know Ruth will miss the frequent stops for flavored iced coffee. Our favorites were mostly simple things - super ripe fruit (mango!), being able to buy fresh cut fruit as a snack in the park, the handmade hot tortillas with "squeezy beans", and our near-daily avocado toast with always perfectly ripe avocado. The girls loved that cheap smoothies were offe...

We spent the first weekend in July on "a vacation from our vacation," swapping our normal Antigua routines for a visit to Lake Atitlan. The lake is the deepest lake in Central America, a huge volcanic crater. The majority of the population here is Maya and many different Maya languages are spoken, with Spanish as their second language. Saturday Our shuttle picked us up around 9 a.m. for our ~2.5-3 hr drive to Panachel, a larger town (~15K ppl) on one end of the lake. Pana was the first place where we saw older Guatemalan men in traditional clothing. (In Antigua, many women wear the beautiful traditional clothes but we never saw any men.)  We ate lunch at a traditional Guatemalan place where Bill had a fish fried whole, then walked to the dock to catch a boat taxi over to the small village of San Marcos. Boats are the easiest way to get around the lake because it's surrounded by so many volcanos and other mountains that there aren't really any big roads circling it. Pe...

This was one of our most anticipated activities while researching our trip, because come on, how cool is roasting marshmallows on an active volcano? Pacaya's last big eruption was in 2010, sending ash raining all the way to the capital 30 miles away. Lava rivers flowed even last year. We weren't expecting to see any lava (and didn't), but weren't sure what it would be like exactly. This was one case where we didn't want to research too much and spoil the surprise of the experience. We had a 6 a.m. shuttle pickup, bumped around the town's cobblestone streets for a while picking up other passengers, then started the hour-long ride to the national park. We passed through smaller villages on the ride and got some peeks into life there: horses carrying cargo, guys packed like sardines into the back of a truck headed to work, women hand washing clothes at a central public laundry pool.  At the entrance to the park, we had a quick bathroom break (water at sink but not ...