Alaska and beyond 2006.

This story starts around September 2005, when Gail and I first discussed seriously the possibility of visiting Alaska. It seems that every time we have a medical wake-up call, we take stock of our priorities and decide to plan to do some of the things we have spoken about for years but never actually done anything about.
Example No.1 was in 1994 when Gail was recovering from her 12 months of intensive Chemo-therapy, following her run-in with bowel cancer in 1991. On that occasion we "went around Australia" with our caravan - a 9 month trip in total. The following year (1995) we did an "around the world" trip, visiting the U.K., Western Europe, USA and Canadian Rockies - 15 weeks in all. Then again in early 2000, following another run in with Cancer by Gail, this time breast cancer, we went on the adventure of a lifetime to Cape York - a never to be forgotten experience. Last year it was my turn to have a medical wake-up call, following firstly Prostate removal, then a heart condition, topped off by the removal of a tumour in my bladder. Yes, you guessed it: time to plan another long dream't of adventure. Alaska called, not just an Inside Passage Cruise, but the full bottle; "Alaska In Depth & The Yukon". In conjunction with this we have decided to once again do the "around the world" bit, visiting different places as much as possible, plus revisiting some of our favourites from 1995.
We have now finalised our itenary for just on 12 weeks absence from home. It looks something like this:
May 29, 2006. Depart Sydney for Vancouver.
May 31st. Depart Vancouver on a 20 day combined Cruise ship, Coach and Rail tour of the Inside Passage, Canadian Yukon, Alaskan inland as far north as Fairbanks, then 7 days Cruise ship from Seward back to Vancouver.
Late June/July: Visit San Francisco, Ventura, LA, San Diego, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas in a rental car. Then fly to Boston MA on the east coast where we take up residence at Wilmington, Vermont for 7 days. We intend to use Wilmington as our base while visiting surrounding areas and states such as New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts.
From there we will drive to Buffalo in New York State to visit Niagara Falls, then over the border into Canada to look up The Betchers who are on a 12 month teacher exchange in Oakville, Ontario. It's then back to Connecticut with visits to New York City. From Connecticut we head south to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From there we fly to Shannon in Ireland, spend about 7 days there, then over to London where we rent a motorhome and tour the UK for 14 days before heading home.