travel

Booking Tips from a Travel Ace

 in Travel tips  tagged Adios Adventure Travel / airlines / elder travel / Jacquie Whitt / Machu Picchu / Peru / plane tickets / travel / travel agent / Travel tips by

What luck to find a travel agent who knows just how to smooth the way for an elder in Peru.  I’ve been on a mission to get my 85 year old mother to Machu Picchu since told me she’d always wanted to go.  Jacquie Whitt fixed us up for April, but  could only suggest international flights for getting there and back.  Even with her suggestions, we almost had panic attacks over booking the tickets.  There are just so many details to get right and so much money blown if it’s wrong.  Too late I thought, Jacquie books trips all day every day.  Ask her how to get it right.  Here’s what she said: When I book plane tickets: * […]

Where to Eat in the Inside Passage

 in Alaska / Travel tips  tagged Alaska / cruise ship / tour guides / travel / travel food tips by

“I think a banana is a good gift,” a rafting guide told me.  The more I listened to Alaskan guides, the more I realized that food is an issue in those parts.  Transportation costs make food pricey up north, and customs regulations much compound the problem.  Another guide talked about buying berries in Canada and having to pull over and finish eating them before she reached the border. A camper I know was so disgusted at having to give up her oranges “to protect Alaska’s citrus orchards” that she smuggled a few tomatoes through the next checkpoint.  I would never do anything […]

Gasless in Alaska

 in Alaska  tagged Alaskan Highway / Alcan Highway / bears / Hyder Alaska / Meziadin Junction / Milepost / travel by

Along the Alaskan Highway gas stations are crucial stepping stones.  Travelers–especially RVers–who leap, then look, are apt to end up hitchhiking in hungry bear territory.  Steve did his homework and plotted every gas stop along our route before we left home.  Milepost, the guide to negotiating Alcan, kept us comfortably fueled until we’d almost reached Alaska’s southernmost highway stop, about 40 miles from our intended Hyder camp spot.  At Meziadin Junction we pulled into a lonely gas station and found it closed–as in vacant.  Our fuel-mileage-estimator showed no hope for making Hyder with our camper…but the pickup, unhitched, had a chance of getting close. Leaving the trailer mid-nowhere […]

Bear Crossing

 in Alaska / Wildlife/animals  tagged Alaska / bear cub / bears / camp trailer / Canada / travel by

Steve spotted the bear a good way down a wide-open Canadian highway.  He let off the gas to give her ample time to get clear.  Then a cub scrambled up behind her.  Steve applied some brake.  Well all know that camp trailers take extra time to give up momentum, but the cub was okay as long as he held to his course across the roadway.  As many bears as we’d seen in our Alaska exploration, it was still a treat to watch the pair–until a second cub took up the rear.  Steve used his best words, pushed the brakes to the limit, and we held our […]