We’ve been on the road for over six months already. I can’t believe how the time has flown, yet it feels like eons since we’ve been in Key West. Seems like a good time to do some wrap ups.
Miles traveled: around 15,000
States visited: 14
Provinces visited: 3
Nights slept outside Skyhorse (indoors): 11
Nights slept with Skyhorse parked on diagonal: 6 (4 in Seattle, 2 in Daly City)
Nights parked in a Walmart parking lot: 6
Times bothered by police: 4
Number of notes left on the truck: 2
Number of tickets: 0
Number of cookies baked for us: 1, in Daly City
Fellow travelers met on the road: Maria and Brian of The Roaming Pint, the Ramseier family from Switzerland, Erica and Sam of Song of the Road, and Richard and Ashely of Desk to Glory
Best meal: Swan Oyster Depot. Twice.
Most popular meals cooked in Skyhorse: skirt steak on a salad / chicken thighs in the cast iron skillet with some veggie / spaghetti with meat sauce
Most interesting game meat: moose
Worst night: battling mosquitos in Montana from sundown until 3am
Most bizarre game: Rat Race where a wheel with colored segments with holes at the ends spins, you place a bet, and a rat runs out of the center into one of the colored segments as the wheel spins
Most colorful city: Dawson City, Yukon (touristy gold rush town by day, roaring party town by night)
Strangest thing we’ve done: took a shot of tequila with a frostbitten toe in it at the Sourtoe Bar in Dawson City, Canada
Longest we’ve stayed in one place: 7 days in both Gretna, LA and San Francisco, CA
Most quoted interview: Charles Ramsey (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, google it. Totally amazing)
Most watched TV show: The Wire
Most watched movie: Captain Ron
Best visitor: Peter, not just because he has been our only visitor, but because he got us hooked on The Wire and Breaking Bad
Worst brewery: St Elias Brewing in the Kenai Peninsula. They made us pay for a beer they knew was spoiled.
Times we’ve been in a local paper: 2 (Key West before we left and Homer, AK)
Best farmers market: San Fran
Most addictive travel food: jerky
Best jerky: Yukon Meat and Sausage
Worst oyster experience: South Bend, Washington where we bought 24 oysters (for $13!), it took Hani an hour to shuck, stabbed himself then the oysters were slimy and icky.
Most pointless drive: at 3pm we paid $12 to drive through a one way 3 mile long tunnel to Whittier, AK. We drove through the town and got back in line to cross back through the tunnel for the 3:30 crossing. I’m positive this was the highlight of Peter’s Alaskan experience.
Most scenic drive: through the Canadian Rockies
Most breathtaking view: tied–Lake Louise, Alberta and the waterfalls in Yellowstone
Number of glaciers seen: 8
Favorite artifacts: totem poles
Best tour: VLA (Very Large Array) in Socorro, NM
Best tour guide: tied–Timmy, our rafting guide in Buena Vista, and the young girl at Tabasco that yelled her scripted speech at us
Most interesting tour experience: tied again–the older lady who shooed us out of LBJ’s boyhood home abruptly because “it is time for my lunch break” and the bus driver in Denali that said at a stop that he assumed we all knew how to tell time and he wasn’t waiting for anyone.
US National Parks visited: 8 (Mesa Verde, Canyonland, Arches, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Denali, Yosemite)
Favorite National Park: Yellowstone with the Canadian Rockies as a close second
Best animal viewing: a family of bears eating salmon out of the river in Valdez
Most difficult words for Sarah to pronounce: fjord and chalet
Times a day we argue: about twice a day, usually about directions because I don’t pay attention
Best coincidence: seeing Chris Francis on a bus in Denali
Shae’s favorite day(s): those spent cuddling in our laps as we bum around the truck
Olivia’s favorite day: running like a beast with Jo and Ted the dogs at the TLC ranch
Most regretted missed opportunity: not connecting with author Lynn Schooler in Juneau
Repairs on Skyhorse: new tires, new u-joint, new coolant hose and new starter (Hani replaced the last two himself!)
Most costly repair: u-joint $1426
Number of oil jugs lost: 2
Most expensive diesel: $5.50/gallon in Canada
Times used our kayak: 3
Times used motorcycle: 7
Items replaced under warranty for free: 6 (Hani’s iPhone, GoPro, Smith sunglasses, 2 different parts of the AirMax fan, propane tank)
Days when no money was spent at all: 10
Number of fire circles gathered around: 3
Worst weather: the cold rain that soaked us in Denali
Best weather: Colorado
Hottest state: Utah
Worst city to drive in: LA
Worst roads: Last Dollar Highway in Colorado and Top of the World Highway in Canada/US
Most difficult city to park in: downtown Austin
Top 6 questions asked: 1-what is it? 2-what’s with the plane? 3-what’s your gas mileage? 4-were you on tv? 5-did you build it? 6-where are you from?
Most memorable experiences: being followed by a massive herd of mooing cows in eastern NM, seeing entire Earthship communities in Taos (and touring one!), white water rafting in Colorado, hiking Arches National Park, an insane hail storm in WY, 4th of July in Dubois, walking on a glacier in Alaska, and visiting all our friends and family along the way
Sarah
Hani
Excellent recap! I had to Google Charles Ramsay and enjoyed the autotune remix of Deadgiveaway! Hahahaa. Love your stories… I have quite a few of my own at this point. See you in the future! Xoxo Lisa
loved reading this! just so much to soak in. the frostbitten toe?!
Yeah!! Check out our month 4 recap for a picture! And in our Alaska album 🙂
Wow..very cool recap! Yes…I was one of those who said “what is that” when skyhorse was parked on Southhill Blvd in Daly City…hope you liked the cookies! May