Day One - Apr 8, 2025

Anchorage, AK to Helper, UT

Tonight's Lodging: One of our favorite AirBNBs

Today's Weather: 31 degrees and snowing in Anchorage, 50ish and raining at SeaTac, low 70’s in Helper

High Point: Leaving behind some ridiculous spring weather back home

Low Point: Oh, you know. It’s a trek.

Touristic Events: The SeaTac Centurion Lounge, Whole Foods in Salt Lake City, Balanced Rock Cafe in Helper

Travel Tip: Practice makes perfect. We’ve got this maximalist camping trip travel pretty well figured out.

Miles By Plane: 2,134

Miles By Automobile: 116

Miles By Foot: 6.8

Daily Didactic

Our travel day started (as is typical for us) very late. Jose, our Uber driver, dropped us off at ANC around 11:00. We checked our four cases of camping gear and were through security in 15 minutes. With an unintended 40 minutes until boarding, we enjoyed a decidedly unhealthy midnight snack at 49th State Brewing. We settled into our exit row a little after midnight and eked out a few hours of sleep on the way to Seattle.
We hit the bougie SeaTac Centurion Lounge for our three hour layover a little after 5:00am and continued onto Salt Lake around 9:30. A little over two hours of flight time later, we collected our baggage and rental car, detouring to Whole Foods and Costco before heading southeast to one of our favorite little towns, Helper. We stayed here first three years ago on our “taking a black dog to the desert” road trip with Oscar. Helper is an artsy reinvention of an old coal town. It also has a lovely AirBNB we are quite fond of.
We took a quick walk around town. And headed to Balanced Rock Cafe for a celebratory dinner before calling it a necessary but ultimately successful day of staging for the desert.

Where we slept last night.