Road Trip

Sailing often provides beautiful land and seascape views. However, in most places, there are jewels to be seen on land as well. We've driven across Canada before, many years ago, but due to life commitments we were forced to whiz by places that deserved more time. Also, we'd missed a few places in previous travels to Yukon and Alaska. So, as we're in the area, now seemed like a good time to fill in those gaps. Gjoa won't be arriving in Alaska until September. The weather in Alaska in September and October is not ideal for sailing, so,we'll save that spectacular cruising ground for spring and summer. Autumn however is a great time for fall landscape colours, wildlife migrations and being able to visit places not overrun with the summer hordes (both insect and human), so, we plan to do some road touring then.

We decided the best way to 'hit the road' was by buying our very own 'land yacht'. Thanks to the internet and all the market research we had done, we knew exactly what we wanted when we got to Ontario. We needed to buy in a hurry if we were to make it all the way back to Yellowknife to pick up our return flight to Cambridge Bay on June 28. We were successful in our search and very pleased with our purchase.

This is the road trip we are on now. We started in Toronto where we purchased our van and at the time of writing, are near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Once we arrive in Yellowknife, the van will remain in a secure storage yard until we return to pick it up sometime in September.

This picture is the route we will do in the autumn, after Gjoa gets to Alaska.

Here is the Pleasure-Way van we purchased to be our cruising home for our land adventures. Almost twenty years old, but, in very good shape with low mileage.