Yep, that’s my life.  When I am not planning my Alaskan Adventure I am traveling North America selling dog food.  I love my job & the people I work with are fantastic!  This week during my travels I chatted with a few other road warriors about my upcoming journey to the Arctic.  I met two separate people who ‘always wanted to do that, but never got the chance’.  I’m glad we are going.  It isn’t an easy trip to plan, and it certainly isn’t cheap, but I know it will be a trip we will remember forever.

Traveling for work = points, and I LOVE points!  Today I cashed in some of my points for Amazon gift cards!  I am super excited to order the last of our necessities for our journey.  It feels like FREE stuff, but I am certain I paid for it with my weeks away from home.

We are going to buy the ACR PLB to ensure we can get help if we need it.  A Personal Locating Beacon has a lot more power, more satellites & more battery life than the fancy InReach which also texts. We’ll go with safety & reliability over nifty part-time features.

We are also thinking we’ll get the Garmin Virb instead of a GoPro.  We will have 1 of each so we can compare.  All of these items will be purchased with THE points!

My new book arrived this week.  Backpack Gourmet.  Did you know you can dehydrate almost anything?  Who knew?!  I’m going to make some of these to keep in my pantry for easy lunches at home!  I am well on my way to creating delish meals for our trek.  Now I just have to figure out what can cross the Canadian border.  With a nifty adapter & a new cooking pot we’ll be able to use our Jetboil to prepare most of our meals.  I’ve read that food is very expensive, so hopefully this will help us eat affordably.  I’m also on day 7 – no pop, no caffeine!  That is a money & calorie saver!  It has not been easy!

Shawn found a tire solution for us in the Road Pilot.  We should be able to make the whole trip on one set of tires, which will be awesome!  He also found a nice windshield option for the Ulys.  We are leaning towards the Madstad 18″ for me & the 20″ for Shawn.

I used my Hilton points to book a couple of free hotel stays along the way.  Those will be nights of luxury after camping & riding! For 2 wonderful nights I’ll walk in to hear “Good evening Mrs. Hickey, we hope you enjoy your stay”!  I am certain I will!!

It’s a good thing we started planning early, I already feel like we are running out of time.  Just 85 planning days left!

Today I am feeling exceptionally grateful.