LODGING LOGISTICS

THE most difficult part of the planning phase of this adventure has been figuring out lodging.  Throughout our lives, when we've traveled by car, lodging was a flexible thing -- you drove 'till you were ready to stop, then you looked around for a Holiday Inn, Super 8 or Motel 6.  All we really needed was a clean place to freshen up and lay our heads for 8-10 hours each night.  To a large extent, that might still work for much of this trip with a couple of glaring exceptions...

Arriving without reservations in Alaska at the peak of their Summer Season 1) ensures we'd have little hope of finding a room and 2) guarantees any decent room we did find would cost upwards of what might be a month's rent in most of the lower 48 states.  A neighbor whose business is travel advised us to try AirBNB, and bless her for that pointer!  We were able to book a one bedroom apartment for the time we'll be in Juneau at half the cost of any hotel room in the city!  Mind you, it took hours of searching through listings to find a suitable AND available place, but we did find something eventually. It comes with a top-notch host rating, but we'll give you our own review when we get there!

Likewise, although less expensive, finding a room at either Yellowstone or near Mt. Rushmore (two of our planned destinations on the return journey) might have proved problematic because of our chosen arrival dates.  Once again, the hours spent on AirBNB paid off, netting us a one-room cabin and a guest house respectively.  Note to anyone planning a similar trip in the future:  The minute you know you're going, book your lodging!  Most accommodation options will be gone if you wait as late as we did (only two months out).

Since Mom still carries Military Dependent status, we'll use Military Lodging whenever possible.  We highly recommend this option to families of active duty or retired veterans.  You get clean, safe accommodations at a fraction of the cost of comparable civilian lodging.

It's a real departure in practice for us to book lodging ahead of our arrival, but since over-nighting in the van is out of the question, we've taken the "better safe than sorry" approach!  I haven't booked all of our lodging. We'll stay flexible on those legs of the trip when our overnight stop is simply within a 50-mile stretch of road, but I did make a point of locating at least two viable lodging options within those stretches to minimize the guesswork at the end of a long day's drive.  I'll let you know how that works out.