Sharing Our Itinerary: 3 Month Roadtrip from Phoenix to Alaska

Think Joshua Trees in the Mojave Desert. Think kayaking through the world’s largest sea caves. Think overnight in a Napa Valley Vineyard, and watching the sunrise from the beach over San Fransisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Think wilderness camping in Alaska, with tours to see Grizzly bears, orcas and more. Think walking among Californian Redwoods, and putting your neck out because there is no way you can see that high. Think one kick-ass itinerary which combines all of the above experiences into one epic roadtrip, and you’re thinking of our next big adventure!

Having settled in Phoenix and spent the last 6 months exploring every inch of the desert as we possibly could, we’re now craving the beach, and have decided to take 3 full months to complete the length of California’s Coastal Highway 101, all the way to Alaska! We will be taking in over 10 amazing National Parks along the way, looking at three months worth of hotels, and throwing a lot of wilderness camping into the mix.

We’re going to be traveling the entire length of North America’s west coast, driving through California, Oregon, Washington State, British Columbia and Alaska, bringing you the best in adventure travel along the way! And we couldn’t be more excited!

Here are the highlight’s we’re working into our trip. We drive from Phoenix to Alaska starting April 10 2015 via the coast, and then drive all the way back through the middle of each State. We will sell our car in Phoenix upon our return, and then did I mention we’re moving to Australia?!

Roadtrip Highlights

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park. Photo by Don Graham

Camping in the Channel Islands

Channel Islands. Photo CC by Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith

San Fransisco including the Golden Gate Bridge & Alcatraz

Photo credit: Nicolas Raymond

Napa Valley

Portland

Seattle

British Columbia – Two Weeks for Vancouver & Vancouver Island

Alaska – Two Weeks including Camping in Denali National Park

Washington State – Two Weeks

Yosemite National Park, California

El Capitan, Yosemite National Park. Photo CC by Giuseppe Milo

Arizona – What Better Way to Say Goodbye to the States than with the Grand Canyon

Photo by Grand Canyon National Park

Australia

Time to say goodbye. The United States has been a wonderful home over the past two years, and has provided us with an amazing base to explore this side of the world, with cheap and amazing access to Central and South America, as well as affordable flights to Europe. But it’s now time to say goodbye.

We aim to land in Australia mid July this year, and will set up a new base in Canberra before deciding where to travel next. With close proximity to Asia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and heck, Australia itself, the possibilities are exciting and endless!

How to Plan an Epic Roadtrip

A trip of this proportion requires an epic amount of planning. We’re looking forward to just driving the Californian coast and being flexible enough to spend more time in each destination as we see fit and changing it up as we go along, though we’ve learnt that if you don’t at least plan out a backbone of your trip and figure out where you want to go in advance, you’ll likely miss out.

For instance camping on the Channel Islands in California books out months in advance, and we’re hitting Alaska and British Columbia during peak season. We don’t want to forget about that old tea house we read in a blog, or the sushi place we heard about from a friend. We don’t want to miss out just because we didn’t properly plan it out.

Another one of those essential travel apps you should download, our entire itinerary is being put into TripVerse, where you can create your very own personal, pocketable itinerary you can read offline – perfect for an epic roadtrip!

It’s a free app, and an amazing and easy way to compile your itinerary when you’re planning a trip.

Creating an itinerary is literally as easy as clicking “Add activity”, and then adding the information about each new activity, whether it be your hotel for the evening or that great fish & chips shop you were told you shouldn’t miss.

The app has FourSquare integration, so it stores the address and phone numbers of each place for you as you type to add the location name – incredibly useful. It also gives you the option of adding a cover image to each individual activity. Just to make it pretty!

Add the location name, the time and date, and any notes you have about that specific place, and TripVerse throws everything into one easily accessible offline itinerary viewer that removes the distraction of carrying paper itineraries for travelers.

The beauty of this app is that once your activities are added it includes map functions with directions, and you can cache the maps to be available offline – all for free!

So worst case, if you’re driving and your GPS goes down, you’ve got the back-up of already cached offline maps.

It’s easy to become fully immersed in the perfect trip you’ve planned with TripVerse. It’s also a travel plan-sharing platform, so if you feel like your trip is epically awesome, you can make your itinerary public and let others view it.

By the same token, you can also search for itineraries based off what others have already created, and share your trips with your friends.

The Discover function lets you explore trips made by fellow travel enthusiasts and Facebook friends as well as bookmark trips that inspire your future travel.

Additionally, you can edit your profile to store info like your passport details and hotel loyalty numbers.

Get TripVerse

Meg Jerrard is an Australian Journalist who has been travelling and blogging around the world for the last 7 years to inspire others to embark on their own worldwide adventure!  Her husband Mike is an American travel photographer, and together they have made the world their home.

Follow their journey on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.