{"id":4242,"date":"2014-05-30T08:53:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T15:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/?p=4242"},"modified":"2014-05-30T08:53:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T15:53:31","slug":"trip-report-to-the-last-frontier-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/?p=4242","title":{"rendered":"Trip Report – To the Last Frontier: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s currently the end of May. So far this year my mileage balanace for total travelled miles is 0. That’s right, a big giant Donut. I need to fly! I must get up in the air, now, anywhere.. please just let me fly. When I saw a fare sale on a weekend telling me that fares to Alaska were $100 each way… well.. guess where I am going!! Since I had considered going to Alaska at the end of last year during my “$100 Challenge” <\/a> and instead went to Kansas, might as well tick another state off my list right?<\/p>\n

So after finding a decent weekend that would work with the fares (sadly on United so that is going to be interesting, since I have’t flown them intentionally in a while) and work as well, I locked it in. The hotel actually cost more than the flights in this situation. Hotel prices in Anchorage just are not cheap (well it is cruise ship season I guess) but I managed to find a decent rate at the Holiday Inn Express near the airport. Considering I intend on spending most of my time taking photos around the airport I might as well stay close by right? Saves having to go that far after getting off a flight at like 1am in the morning.<\/p>\n

The hardest part of the trip planning was arranging a car. Normally I would just book the usual National car rental in a mid size, pick up off the Executive line and all would be good. But a few friends had suggested previously that a Truck is needed for spotting. Since I wouldn’t have access to a step ladder and with fairly large fence lines in some area, I needed to get an MFAP. What’s an MFAP? A Mobile Fence Avoidance Platform… aka a Truck. Normally I would avoid driving a truck when renting. I drive one at home, why do I need another one? Well since I need it, I might as well get it. But for some reason the only company that had availability for one was Enterprise. I even had the National Car Rental Social Media team check for me. Nada. O well \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

So I booked the truck rental, the hotel and the flights and with everything fast approaching (tonight) I can finally get back up in the Air!! A Map right about now would look fairly boring and since it is just up and back on United, that is fairly boring. But the plane spotting will be good (if I am lucky I will get a lot of freighter traffic and HOPEFULLY a Everts Commando), the weather might hold out, but no matter what. I am up for whatever it brings.<\/p>\n

Bring on the Travel!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s currently the end of May. So far this year my mileage balanace for total travelled miles is 0. That’s right, a big giant Donut. I need to fly! I must get up in the air, now, anywhere.. please just let me fly. When I saw a fare sale on a weekend telling me that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,8,1,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-spotting","category-expat","category-life-in-general","category-travelling","category-tripreports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49RU0-16q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4243,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions\/4243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}