I'm going to go ahead and pick up like everyone is aware I'm still with NBC, own a home with wife Dorothy in Mira Mesa, San Diego and have been raising kids since 2011. We've done a lot, seen a lot, this is the adventure crescendo of our family so far.
And it had been a while since we took a trip that required this much planning.
Alaska is different.
It is really big, there aren't that many roads, the places you want to see aren't conveniently located next to one another and some of the things worth doing require a boat or airplane just to get there.
Our biggest tool beyond maps and imagination? AI aggregating the travel & timing details... plotting routes, RV parks, reservations, drive times, excursions and backup plans all sorted into the calendar. We had ten days with the RV and the idea was to make a big loop through a small piece of a state that is larger than most people's comprehension of geography.
As usual, Dorothy was persistent enough to make sure things actually got done and I kept it organized. We had been chipping away at the tasks for months... we work well together, especially when we're spending the much more fun to spend "vacation money."
Then in July 2026, after talking about the trip for months, the four of us finally got on an early morning flight in San Diego.
Alaska... Here we go.
Through Seattle and connecting to Anchorage, where the first major order of business was picking up the RV.
This was our first family vacation in a drivable RV, our tent-trailer was long-gone.
This thing was basically a Ford truck carrying a small apartment on its back. Kitchen, refrigerator, bathroom, shower, beds, table, storage, generator... the girl walked us around it explaining everything.
Fresh water. Gray water. Black water. Propane. Generator. Electrical hookup. Dumping the tanks. How to return it.
I listened carefully because there are few phrases capable of motivating proper procedure quite like BLACK WATER TANK.
We loaded up, luggage in the back, and headed to Walmart to stock up the cabinets before driving north.
Our first destination was Talkeetna.
I already liked the RV. There was something familiar about having everything with us. When I was younger I loved traveling with everything I needed stuffed into a backpack. There was freedom in knowing that wherever I ended up, everything I owned for the next month was sitting on my shoulders.
This was essentially the same philosophy. Except now my backpack had six tires, a refrigerator and a toilet.
I have evolved.
Talkeetna
Our first taste of the little Alaska towns I had pictured while planning this thing.
Small. Walkable. Old buildings. Local shops. Tourists mixed with people who clearly actually live there. And mountains somewhere behind all of it.
Talkeetna also has a long history as a jumping-off point for Denali expeditions, so naturally I found that interesting.
There was a time when getting that close to Denali would have immediately caused my brain to start calculating expedition costs, routes, gear and how much vacation time I could somehow manufacture.
This trip had a slightly different mission. We wandered around town, had dinner at the Denali Brewing Company, wandered near the river and eventually headed back to the RV for the night.
The next day we drove. And drove.
This would become a theme. The interesting part was that the driving never really felt like the wasted part between destinations. Alaska was the destination.
There were rivers beside the road, mountains in front of us and enormous areas where there appeared to be absolutely nothing.
Which was perfect.
Denali
We continued toward Denali National Park.
This was one of the anchors of the northern half of the trip.
Denali has always occupied a particular place in my mountain brain.
Rainier was the mountain that taught me that preparation and desire don't mean shit if the mountain decides otherwise. Years ago I spent an enormous amount of time learning glaciers, equipment, routes and weather before attempting the Kautz. I had always respected Denali as an entirely different level of that game.
This time, rather than carrying a 60-pound pack toward it, I was arriving with Dorothy and the kids in an RV.
Also acceptable haha.
We entered the park and found our campsite, backed our house into the trees and started figuring out how RV camping actually worked.
After a short hike to acclimate to our new home, Journey started a fire while we made some food. Sometime close to midnight I looked outside and it was still light. Not sunset light. The sun was down, it was still light.
Your brain absolutely refuses to accept that it's time for bed when the world outside looks like 7:30 PM.
The kids didn't seem particularly upset about this feature.
The next day I spent the morning hiking while the rest of the family cleaned up.
After lunch we boarded one of the green park buses.
There is something entertaining about taking what is essentially a school bus into six million acres of wilderness.
But that's Denali. Once the road starts heading into the park, civilization disappears quickly. Huge river valleys. Tundra. Mountains. Clouds sitting low enough that some of the peaks disappeared completely.
We got off and walked. The scale is hard to photograph because there isn't much reference. Something that looks like a little creek below you might actually be a braided river valley a mile wide.
A hill is a mountain. A mountain is a mountain range. And Denali itself can simply hide behind weather despite being 20,310 feet tall.
Pretty much the ultimate reminder that the world doesn't particularly care about your itinerary.
We saw wildlife, including a moose close enough to the road to remind everyone that a moose is considerably bigger than it appears on television. Also goats, caribou, a Grizzly and some other smaller animals I can't remember.
Back at camp we settled into another night in the RV, we were getting pretty good at this... or at least nobody had accidentally discharged the black-water tank, yet.
The next phase was the next morning after breakfast.
The long drive south.
This is where the map lies to you. You look at Alaska on a screen and think: "Okay, Denali to the Kenai Peninsula."
Then Google gives you a number of hours that makes Southern California traffic suddenly seem reasonable.
But I didn't mind. The scenery kept changing. Forest. River. Open tundra. Mountains. More mountains. Then eventually the landscape started tightening around us as we headed toward Girdwood and Turnagain Arm.
There is a section of highway down there where the mountains basically drop directly into the water.
Now we're talking.
We stopped. Walked around. Took pictures. Drove some more. Stopped again. At this point we were already acquiring an obscene amount of video.
This will surprise absolutely nobody.
When I traveled through Asia and New Zealand years ago, I wrote everything down because I knew the small details would eventually disappear. Recording seems like the best tribute... these days that problem is solved with cloud storage.
We found a place to park the RV in Girdwood, did some hiking around, ate dinner & eventually continued south to Granite Springs for the night.
We got in late, Journey was now our official firestarter so we did that, and wandered the site. Brighton and I will remember Mama's concern with the ranger carrying both a gun AND bear spray, as well as the very brown water from the well :)
The next morning after a quick moment of zen in the creek with the fly rod, we packed up and continued south toward Seward.
The drive into Seward was one of my favorites. Mountains closing in around the highway. Water beside us. Snow still hanging high above everything even though it was July.
By this point the RV was starting to feel normal. We knew where everything went, what needed to be secured before driving and which cabinet had not been properly latched based solely on the sound of shit hitting the floor behind us.
Then the road basically runs out at Resurrection Bay.
We pulled into our campground right along the water.
This was one of those RV moments where the entire concept suddenly made perfect sense.
Our hotel room was parked beside Resurrection Bay. Open the door. There's the ocean. Look across it. Mountains. Need a jacket? You're here. Need to move? Start the engine.
I was getting it.
We walked around and got some lunch/dinner, making our next plan, which was laundry. The kids took some time to rest while Mom & Dad explored the historic downtown on a Friday night.
We found an outdoor music fest of some sort, with beer!
Exactly what the doctor had ordered on our 16th wedding anniversary :)
We enjoyed a few and took in the Japanese punk band "Fine, Great" before retiring for the evening.
Tomorrow was our early morning cruise.
Kenai Fjords
Saturday morning we woke up in Seward with the RV still parked right along Resurrection Bay and headed down to the harbor for our six-hour Kenai Fjords National Park cruise.
This was one of the bigger things we'd planned before the trip, and one of those days where Alaska did exactly what Alaska was supposed to do.
The weather was gray, cold and a little wet.
We bundled up, after a few hours got on the boat, and headed out through Resurrection Bay.
Almost immediately the scenery became ridiculous. Mountains dropping directly into the ocean, waterfalls, cliffs, little islands and sea stacks sticking out of the water, snow still hanging high above us even though it was July.
And wildlife. Lots of wildlife.
Sea lions were piled onto rocks. Birds were everywhere.
Then somebody spotted a whale.
Whale watching is hilarious. Fifty people can stand on the deck staring at an enormous empty ocean for twenty minutes and then suddenly somebody yells:
"THERE!"
Everybody runs to one side of the boat. Cameras come up. Half the people take a picture of absolutely nothing.
Then—
WHOOOOSH.
Another blow.
Now everybody runs somewhere else.
Eventually we got better at it and had whales surfacing around us, including a few nice looks at tails disappearing back underwater AND saw "Bubble Net feeding," another remarkable moment seeing that huge mouth breach the surface.
Pretty damn cool.
The farther we went into Kenai Fjords, the more dramatic everything became. We passed sea lions, eagles and puffins nesting on cliffs and these rocky islands that looked like somebody had dropped them into the ocean specifically for landscape photographers.
Then we got to the glacier.
I've stood on glaciers. I've climbed on glaciers. I've slept beside glaciers.
They're still impressive.
You can see photographs of one and understand what you're looking at, but it doesn't really convey the size, or the feel of the cold emanating from the massive block.
This enormous river of ice comes down out of the mountains and ends directly in the ocean. Snow falls up there, it compresses, becomes ice, starts moving, and eventually after a process measured in hundreds or thousands of years we're sitting in a boat watching pieces of it fall into the sea.
The blue color was incredible.
Everything else around us was gray, green, black and white, and then there was this gigantic wall of blue ice.
We stayed long enough to appreciate it, take an unreasonable number of pictures and video clips, and eventually started the long ride back toward Seward.
Cold. A little wet. Completely satisfied.
Once we got back to Seward, it was time to move again.
We climbed into the RV and headed west across the Kenai Peninsula toward Kenai and K Beach Campground.
By now the RV had stopped feeling like something we'd rented and started feeling like where we lived.
We knew what had to get put away before driving. We knew what rattled. We knew which cabinet somebody forgot to latch based entirely on the noise that came from behind me the first time I turned. We knew where everything was supposed to go.
Whether it actually went there was another matter.
The drive across the peninsula was beautiful in a completely different way from Seward. Forests. Rivers. Smaller towns. Fishing everywhere.
This side of Alaska felt less dramatic than the fjords but more lived-in.
We made our way toward Kenai and eventually settled into K Beach Campground for the night.
Another campground. Another little patch of Alaska that became home for a few hours.
This is where we met Tom and Piper :)
We have a friend, Tom, who lived with me in San Diego back in 2008... he's actually mentioned in the earliest blogs. He lives in Homer now, raising his 11 year old daughter Piper.
They hauled their camper to this campground, securing the site for the both of us. We caught up while enjoying a fire and some beers.
It had been a big day so once midnight hit, sleep was easy.
Sunday — Fishing, K Beach & Homer
The next morning was our first shot at salmon fishing.
I'd wanted to catch a salmon in Alaska for years.
Not order one in a restaurant. Not buy one frozen.
Catch one, with a fly rod.
So Sunday morning we got up and went fishing, leaving the kids and wife behind to clean up and regroup.
Fishing is one of those activities where a person can perform essentially the same motion over and over again for several hours while remaining irrationally convinced that the next time is going to be completely different.
Cast. Drift. Nothing.
Cast. Drift. Nothing.
Move ten feet because clearly the problem was the fish in that exact section of river.
Cast again.
Still nothing.
It was fun, but the salmon apparently had not received my itinerary.
Tom mentioned something about the tides...
Fine ;)
So we went to lunch at Rocky's Cafe in Kasilof and had the next best thing, a salmon burger lol.
We got some food for the family and went back to the site to pack up. It was drizzling and we were ready to get back on the road south toward Homer.
Along the way we made the assorted stops that never really show up when you're planning a vacation but become part of the trip anyway. Food. Supplies. Whatever the family needed... continuing down the Sterling Highway.
Eventually the landscape started opening up and we got our first real views across Kachemak Bay, and the road ran out onto the Homer Spit.
We liked Homer immediately.
No doubt I've heard many good things, I really wanted to get along with this place.
Fishing boats. Charters. Harbor. Shops. Restaurants. Mountains across the bay. Glaciers. And enough fishing equipment around to ensure I would be distracted approximately every thirty feet.
We pulled into our campground on the Spit and once again parked the RV basically beside the water.
This was becoming the norm.
We walked around the harbor and watched sea otters floating among the boats.
Sea otters seem to have figured life out better than most of us. Float around on your back. Eat. Occasionally hold hands so you don't drift away. No email. No conference calls.
A solid system.
We explored the Spit, checked out the harbor and settled in for the night.
Because Monday morning we were doing the thing I had probably been looking forward to more than anything else on the trip.
Monday — Brooks Falls
This one had been on my list for years.
Everybody has seen it.
The giant brown bear standing at the waterfall while salmon jump upstream directly toward its mouth.
It's basically one of the defining images of Alaska.
The problem is Brooks Falls is inside Katmai National Park.
There is no road.
You don't drive there.
Which meant we needed an airplane.
Monday morning we left Homer a little differently than the average tourist, on a float plane!
A Cessna TU206G turbocharged, high-wing, single-engine bush plane. It carries up to five passengers plus the pilot, and everyone gets a window seat for the flight across Cook Inlet toward Katmai.
Honestly, the flight alone was worth doing.
Flying low over Alaska gives you an entirely different perspective on just how empty and enormous the state really is.
Mountains. Lakes. Rivers winding through wetlands. Snowfields. Volcanoes.
And almost nothing man-made.
No neighborhoods. No freeways. No strip malls. No Costco.
Just Alaska disappearing all the way to the horizon.
Eventually we landed on the water at Brooks Camp.
Before you get to wander around a place filled with giant brown bears, they give you some instruction.
Bear school.
Basically:
The bears live here. You don't. Don't run. Don't carry food around. Don't block a bear. Don't do anything stupid.
Seems reasonable.
Then we started walking.
It didn't take very long.
Bear.
Not a little dark speck on a hillside. Not something I needed a telephoto lens to prove was actually a bear.
A fucking brown bear.
Right there.
Then another one.
The weirdest part is how quickly your brain recalibrates.
Back home, seeing one bear would become the story of the week.
At Brooks Camp, after a little while you're saying:
"Oh look, another bear."
We made our way along the trail and boardwalk toward the falls.
Then suddenly the picture I'd seen for years was right in front of us.
Except there weren't one or two bears.
There were bears everywhere.
Above the falls. Below the falls. Standing in the river. Walking along the shoreline. Coming out of the trees. Fishing. Arguing over fishing spots. Stealing fish. Sitting around looking like they'd already eaten fifteen salmon and couldn't possibly be bothered anymore.
And the salmon were everywhere, the focus on the falls. We waited until the mama nearest caught one in her mouth and walked off to her cubs.
Another bear moves into the spot.
It was so incredible.
Some of the bears clearly knew exactly what they were doing. Others appeared to be using basically the same fishing technique I had used the previous morning:
Stand somewhere. Look confident. Hope eventually a fish makes a terrible decision.
There were moments with so many bears around the falls that I stopped trying to count.
I think Brighton said 27.
I've seen wildlife in a lot of places.
Nothing I've done compares to Brooks Falls.
The kids were watching. Dorothy was looking for that perfect shot. I was wandering the outskirts taking everything in.
At some point we got the family picture overlooking Brooks Falls.
Four of us smiling for the camera while giant brown bears tore salmon to pieces behind us.
Not exactly THE family portrait, but it will be a memory.
Eventually the ranger tapped me on the shoulder.
Our time there ran out.
We walked back through Brooks Camp, passed a few more bears because apparently that had become completely normal, got back into the plane and flew across Alaska toward Homer.
Mountains. Water. Clouds. Volcanoes.
Then Homer appeared beneath us and just like that we were back.
One day.
One of the best wildlife experiences I've ever had.
Probably the highlight of the trip... and when I later looked at what the vacation cost, Brooks Falls wasn't exactly difficult to find on the credit card statement.
It was expensive, but 100% worth it.
Tuesday — Anchor River
It was time to go fishing again.
The salmon had gotten away with it on Sunday.
Today was going to be different.
At least that's what fishermen tell themselves.
The goal was a King Salmon.
Catching one in Alaska had been on my bucket list for a long time.
There are certain things where the location is part of the experience.
Catching a King Salmon somewhere is cool.
Catching one in Alaska?
That's the point.
So we went back out, to a pool Tom has known to be successful.
More casting. More waiting. Tom hooked one... and Journey was in the mix with a spinner from the shore.
Then eventually...
Fish on.
And this time the salmon didn't win.
My first King Salmon... and in Alaska.
Bucket list item: CHECK.
I caught this fucking thing in Alaska.
Mission accomplished.
We didn't hang out much longer, it started to rain and we were getting hungry. Tom did catch another but none were keepers in that river at that time of year.
Catch and release was fine by me, killing that monster seemed like the next level, which can wait till next time.
Once back the family went for a walk to check out otters for maybe our last time, and have a nice seafood dinner.
After we hung out with Tom & Piper at the campground, our last night in Homer was bittersweet. We loved our friends but we really missed our beds and dog.
We were so close.
Tom, Dot & I hit up the Salty Dog for a few drinks and eventually we had to call it a night.
Tomorrow was departure day.
Wednesday — Back Toward Anchorage
Wednesday morning it was finally time to start pointing the RV back north.
This is the part of every vacation I hate.
At the beginning, ten days sounds like forever.
Then somewhere near the end your brain starts doing math.
Three days left.
Two nights.
Tomorrow we return the RV.
Flight leaves at...
Once I start calculating the remaining hours, the trip has begun ending.
We went to visit Tom & Piper, a stop to see their place and say one last goodbye...
I will be back friend.
Then continued back to Homer for lunch, an hour later starting the long drive toward Anchorage.
No one was really talking anymore, it had been a long time together and discussions of "what if we..." started to happen.
More of the Sterling Highway. More Kenai Peninsula. More scenery that we were somehow becoming accustomed to even though objectively it was still ridiculous.
The original thought was to stop at Willow Creek Campground.
We got there.
Alaska had other plans.
Too rainy.
We wandered around for a minute and then made an excuse that we wanted to hit the store.
After more than a week in the RV we'd dealt with plenty of weather, but there comes a point when voluntarily sitting around a soaking-wet campground loses some appeal.
So we opted for Plan B, something we had already researched.
You see, we didn't have a plan for the 12 hours in Anchorage between returning the RV and a timely arrival at the airport.
So that night we traded the RV for something that felt almost foreign at this point:
An actual house.
An Airbnb in Anchorage, we secured for two nights due to our weird 12:55am departure time.
Walls that didn't move. A normal bathroom. Separate rooms. A refrigerator that stayed level. An actual kitchen. TV. Wifi.
Luxury.
The kids were actually surprised :)
I thrived being able to take my time and spread out all over the street/sidewalk to unpack and prep the RV for return the next morning.
Thursday — Anchorage & Goodbye RV
Thursday was our last full day in Alaska.
Dorothy and I woke up early, the kids definitely needed sleep... now came the inevitable task:
Returning the RV.
Ten days earlier I had picked this thing up and spent the first few miles very aware that I was driving a giant rental vehicle containing my entire family and several tanks of substances I preferred not to think about.
Now it felt completely normal.
I knew exactly where it fit in the lane. I knew how it accelerated. I knew how it stopped. I knew which noises were normal. I knew which noise meant somebody had once again failed to secure a cabinet.
It had become ours.
Not legally.
Cruise America would have had some issues with that interpretation.
But it had been home.
Talkeetna. Two nights in Denali. Granite Springs. Seward. Kenai. K Beach. Homer.
Hundreds of miles of Alaska.
Campfires. Meals. Wet clothes. Shoes everywhere. Kids sleeping feet away. Different scenery outside the same windows every day.
Then we pulled into the rental place.
Tanks dumped. Everything emptied. Bags out. Keys handed over.
Our home was just somebody else's RV again.
That felt strange, but good.
It was a huge responsibility and I was over it.
We walked about two miles back to the condo, stopping to buy a few things on the way back. We had twelve hours to kill, pack and eat were the priorities.
Around 11pm, we took an Uber to the airport.
Our Alaska trip was essentially over.
Friday — Home
Very early Friday morning we flew out of Anchorage.
Seattle.
Then San Diego.
And eventually:
Dog. Home. Normal life.
Just like that, Alaska changed categories.
For months it had been something in the future. Something we were researching, planning, booking, changing, looking forward to.
Then for ten days we were inside it.
And now it was something we'd done.
A little while later, because apparently I cannot simply take a vacation and leave it alone, I went through what the whole thing actually cost.
Flights. Ten days with the RV. Campgrounds. Gas for a vehicle whose aerodynamics were approximately equivalent to a Home Depot storage shed. Food. Kenai Fjords. Fishing. The floatplane to Katmai. Brooks Falls. Everything.
The final number wasn't small.
Alaska is not a cheap family vacation.
Shocking revelation.
But what surprised me when I looked back through everything wasn't really how much we'd spent.
It was how little of it I regretted.
The RV was transportation and lodging, sure, but it was also a huge part of the trip itself. For ten days that thing was our house.
Talkeetna. Two nights in Denali. Granite Springs. Seward. Kenai. Homer.
Same beds. Same refrigerator. Same shoes and clothes all over the place.
Different view every time we opened the door.
Could I probably build a spreadsheet showing a rental car and some hotels would have been cheaper?
Probably.
But that wouldn't have been the same trip.
Brooks Falls was expensive too.
Very expensive.
But there's also no road to Brooks Falls.
If you want to stand there with your family watching twenty-something brown bears tear apart salmon in front of you, eventually somebody is going to hand you a credit card machine next to a floatplane.
Andrei was worth it.
When I started Living The Dream in 2008, money and time were already something I thought about differently.
Mostly because I didn't have much money.
I was already in debt and somehow decided the appropriate response was to spend even more of it traveling around the world.
I am still not recommending this as a financial strategy.
But underneath some pretty questionable math was an idea I still believe.
Time is worth more than money.
I'm just much more interested now in knowing exactly how much the time cost me.
When I started this blog, the whole concept was "To Do BEFORE Obtaining Real Responsibility."
At the time I honestly thought there was a window.
No wife. No children. No mortgage. No stable career.
Freedom.
And eventually those other things would show up and the window would close.
So I went.
I traveled. I climbed. I wandered. I spent money I probably shouldn't have spent. I filled my life with as much as I could before "real life" began.
Then real life showed up.
Dorothy. Kids. House. Career. Responsibility.
And eighteen years later the four of us were driving an RV around Alaska.
So obviously I didn't understand that part quite as well as I thought I did.
The kids are getting older now too. There will probably come a summer when nobody can just disappear for ten days because Dad spent six months stuffing an Alaska trip into a calendar.
Journey and Brighton will have their own jobs, friends, trips and plans.
That's life.
So I'm glad we did this one now.
I'm glad Journey became the firestarter.
I'm glad Brighton and I got to laugh about Mama being concerned that the ranger needed both a gun AND bear spray.
I'm glad Dorothy kept looking for the perfect bear picture.
I'm glad Tom and Piper met us along the way.
I'm glad we froze on the Kenai Fjords boat.
I'm glad we saw the bubble-net feeding.
I'm glad we flew across Cook Inlet in a little Cessna.
I'm glad we watched a mother bear catch a salmon and carry it back to her cubs.
I'm glad I caught my first King Salmon.
I'm glad we ended one night having drinks with an old friend at the Salty Dog.
And I'm glad I recorded way too much of it.
Because that's basically what all these trips eventually become anyway.
Stories. Pictures. Videos.
And little things you didn't realize were important until years later when something reminds you of them.
In December 2008 I defined Living the Dream as:
Going to the greatest places you can imagine, not letting anything get in your way & doing it right when you get there.
Almost eighteen years later...
I think it still holds up.
