Cruise Control: a frozen journey from Alaska to Alabama in January

[dlemas]

Hey- I wanted to share an amazing trip that I recently completed in January. A close friend and myself drove from Anchorage, Alaska to Birmingham, Alabama in January! The trip was amazing. We ended up traveling through Whitehorse, Edmonton, Couer d'Alene, Boulder, Oklahoma City and finally we arrived in Birmingham safe and sound.

Check it out and leave a few comments!

Cheers

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

We'd love to hear more about your trip, but you need to share some of the details on this forum.

We do not allow new members to post off-site links, because we don't want people using this forum only to promote their own blogs (This policy is clearly noted, and highlighted, in the confirmation email you get when you sign up for this forum). Once you start participating in this community and have been active for a while, then we can allow you to link to your site.

[DerekT]

Seems like you had a blast! I would really like to know how the condition of the road was, specially in December. Please provide some more info!

[dlemas]

The week after Alabama won the NCAA College Football National Championship in January 2010, Dominick Lemas flew into Birmingham, AL to work with collaborators and train in the area of statistical genetics at the University of Alabama Birmingham for 3 weeks. A graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Dominick works in the area of public health, genetics, and epidemiology.

A year later Dominick was still living in Birmingham . . . without a vehicle. Without transportation, the deep south was nothing more than great suggestions by close friends. In November of 2010, a plan was drafted by Dominick and Shatomi Kerbwy to drive Dominick's Jeep 2002 Liberty Sport from Anchorage, AK to Alabama, AL in the month of January. The morning of December 18, 2010, Dominick flew from Birmingham, AL to Fairbanks, AK and retreived the Jeep from cold storage at -40 degree F on his visit home for the holidays. January 13, 2011, Dominick met up with Shatomi in Anchorage who flew in from Birmingham, AL. The friends quickly took inventory of the travel supplies, provisions, and made several last minute checks before setting out on the road.

[dlemas]

Sorry about bad posting etiquette! How can you take down a thread? We recently finished posting about our trip which I created another thread (oops) in this forum prior to reading this one. I completely forgot that I had created a thread on this site. If you provide information about how to remove a thread then I will make these changes.

In other news, our trip/blog from Alaska to Alabama was very rushed and my return trip in May 2012 will be a little more deliberate. I have found the RoadTrip site to be very useful and plan to participate in various threads over the coming months to hopefully get back some good-blog-karma =) All the best and again sorry for bunging up the forum . .


[Moderator Note: The threads have now been merged]

[dlemas]

The conditions of the road throughout the trip were great! Clearly the portion of road that we were most cautious about was through Canada. I am originally from Alaska so driving during the winter is not a complete shock . . but one can only drive roads that are at least occasionally maintained! Anchorage to the Canadian border was great however when we started into Canada the temperatures were sometimes problematic. The throttle on my Jeep would stick as were were driving 40-50 mph which was a little freaky.

When we got to Dawson's Creek we had finally hit snow storms. The snow in these areas is very dry (champagne powder) and it tends to look like fog or smoke if there is any sort of traffic. This of course made for horrible visibility and slowed the trip considerably. Fortunately we went in the ditch only once somewhere in Canada and within about 10 minute a very nice fellow with a HUGE truck had a tow strap and tugged us out within about 10 minutes!

All in all it was the trip of a lifetime and I highly recommend traversing North America as a road trip. We are in the process of finishing up our blog and totaling up the cost of fuel/ect. it will be interesting to see how much the trip cost and compare it to our return trip in May 2012. Thanks for posting!

[Midwest Michael]

We're glad that you are sharing part of your story here, but as we told you a few months ago, you may not use this forum as site to promote your blog.

The RTA Forum is a community for roadtrippers, and that community is underminded when you ask people to leave this community to hear the details of your trip.

As we told you on your previous visit to RTA, posting links is an earned right, and once you have spent some time actually engaging within this community, sharing your stories and ideas here, then we will allow you to share a link to your blog.