On 29 June, we set off on our first major road trip across North America — a Canada Alaska USA adventure spanning three full months. We’ll be living in our car, seeing everything we possibly can, and most importantly, writing and filming the entire journey. Along the way, you’ll find out not just where we’re headed and what we see, but also how much it all costs, what challenges we face, and we’ll share our best tips so you can plan an even better road trip than ours.
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How We Travel
We bought a car (Dodge Grand Caravan) and converted it into a campervan. It’s got everything — a bed, a fridge, a full cooking setup, and an inverter for charging all our electronics. Basically, apart from a toilet and a shower, we’ve got a complete house on four wheels. The car has over 265,000 kilometres on the clock, so it’s pretty much guaranteed we’ll be doing some repairs along the way. That just makes the adventure even more exciting! If you’re thinking of doing a similar trip from the UK, flying into Calgary with airlines like WestJet or Air Canada and buying a vehicle locally is a surprisingly affordable option.
We’ll sleep wherever we can. Mostly in the car or in our tent — ideally right on a beach, at a campsite, or in a Walmart car park. Whatever the circumstances allow, and above all, as cheaply as possible. Free is best.
Our Route
In a nutshell: Calgary (Canada) – Fairbanks (Alaska) – San Francisco (USA) and back again. But that’s the simplified version, because we’ve got over 100 stops planned along the way. Much of the drive follows the famous Alaska Canada Highway, one of the most iconic road trip routes in the world. Want to know where we are right now? We post photos and videos on Facebook every single day.
What We’ll Do Along the Way
We love hiking, so most of our time will be split between driving and scrambling up mountains. We’ll also need to cook, do laundry, and work online, so every now and then we’ll pop into a hotel lobby (for the wifi), a café, or a laundrette. Along the way, we’ll be filming, photographing, editing, and publishing. Oh, and sending postcards too. 😊
Our Complete Setup
The car: Chiquita, a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan, 3.3L V6, over 265,000 km on the odometer, originally a 7-seater.
What we built:
- A plywood bed (check out the video of our car build) (30 CAD / ~20 € in materials)
- Shelves made from milk crates (2 CAD / ~1.40 € per crate)
What we bought:
- An electric cool box (45 CAD / ~30 €)
- An inverter for charging all our gadgets while driving (39 CAD / ~27 €)
- Camping gear — tent, 2 chairs, a double-burner stove (100 CAD / ~68 €)
- Kitchen utensils, a frying pan, spatulas (50 CAD / ~34 €)
- 2 power banks, including one beefy enough to jump-start the car (80 CAD / ~55 €)
- Foam mattress and memory foam topper, pillows (80 CAD / ~55 €)
- The car itself (2,800 CAD / ~1,900 €)
- Backpacks (200 CAD / ~136 €)
- Various odds and ends (200 CAD / ~136 €)
Preparation Costs
The biggest expense was obviously the car, which we plan to sell at the end of the trip — ideally for the same price we paid. We’ve pulled that off before.
Our total setup costs came to around 3,900 Canadian dollars, which works out to roughly 2,650 €. The gear alone (without the car) set us back about 850 €.
That might sound like a lot, but in Canada it’s an amount you can save up in about two months of work (when there are two of you). We were each earning around 15.50 CAD per hour, bringing home a combined total of roughly 4,000 CAD a month — and we always managed to save half of it.
Daily Budget: 50 US Dollars
We’ve saved enough from our time in Canada (at least we hope so!) to keep travelling until September. To give ourselves a buffer for unexpected expenses, we’ve set a daily spending limit of 50 US dollars (roughly 46 €). Staying connected on the road is essential too — for anyone planning a similar trip, grabbing an eSIM from Holafly is a great way to have data across both Canada and the US without worrying about roaming charges.
What We’ll Be Writing About
We’ll be flooding our social media with travel photos, short updates, and we’ll be documenting our entire journey and every single expense in detail (RIGHT HERE). Look forward to clear weekly updates on how we’re doing financially, how much money we have left, and just how much we’re struggling with our budget. 😃
How You Can Support Us
By buying a postcard from our travels, you can let us know you’re following along and that you care about what we’re up to. We’re not asking for anything more than the actual cost of the stamp and postcard, which we’ll be updating HERE as we go.
Experiences & tickets: Alaska
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Tips and Tricks for Your Vacation
Don’t Overpay for Flights
Search for flights on Kayak. It’s our favorite search engine because it scans the websites of all airlines and always finds the cheapest connection.
Book Your Accommodation Smartly
The best experiences we’ve had when looking for accommodation (from Alaska to Morocco) are with Booking.com, where hotels, apartments, and entire houses are usually the cheapest and most widely available.
Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Good travel insurance will protect you against illness, accidents, theft, or flight cancellations. We’ve had a few hospital visits abroad, so we know how important it is to have proper insurance arranged.
Where we insure ourselves: SafetyWing (best for everyone) and TrueTraveller (for extra-long trips).
Why don’t we recommend any Czech insurance company? Because they have too many restrictions. They set limits on the number of days abroad, travel insurance via a credit card often requires you to pay medical expenses only with that card, and they frequently limit the number of returns to the Czech Republic.
Find the Best Experiences
Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can book guided walks, trips, skip-the-line tickets, tours, and much more. We always find some extra fun there!
