Australia The Route Part 1

The route to Alaska was determined by several things -

• Where the ship from Australia would land in America
• The time of year
• The weather
• Personal choices

From Brisbane, the vessels I was looking at (RORO) all land in Los Angeles.  Even if you ship your cargo to San Francisco, it will land in LA and be railed to SF.  No thank you !!  So the start point will be LA.
Trips to Alaska are determined totally by the seasons. May, June, July, and maybe August.    So that makes the timing easy !  Reading on Mile Post (http://www.milepost.com/home) they say the earlier you go the better in order to miss holiday traffic, so I am planning a May push into Alaska, weather dependent.  (re the Mile Post above, there is some great information and photos on that site, including details on road conditions)
But if I am going to Alaska, why waste a trip ?  Why not have a "warm up" before heading up to Alaska in May !!   Lets do a more southern run, and hope the weather is OK.   By the way, if you own an S1 Elise, they were designed to be driven without a roof.  I therefore try to drive topless as much as I can -only severe rain or cold will make me put my roof on !   Now, where can I go which would be fun ? Being a motor racing nut, I have always been intrigued by the Corkscrew at the Laguna Seca track near San Francisco.  So that seemed like a pretty good place to officially start my trip.  Additionally, being a hill climb nut, Pikes Peak in Colorado has always been a mecca for me, so a trip there seemed like a good idea ! Thus the trip became Laguna Seca to Pikes Peak, but lets find the most interesting roads in between - So, having bought maps, and consulting Google Earth as I went, I started planning.   Death Valley, and then the San Juan mountains and the Rockies seems like a fun way to get to Colorado Springs !   After Pikes Peak, the road north leads to Wyoming where I have been before and have friends, and then I saw Yellowstone, and that looked pretty interesting (and I have driven out from Cody to the Park before on a stunning road (296?), and then I found the Bear Tooth Pass and Chief Joseph Scenic Way en route, so that made that route choice easy !!  And after Yellowstone, head towards Anacortes in Washington where my sister lives so I can have a rest for a couple of days !!
So we ended up with this as part one !!

Now the big issue is going to be the weather.  In order to get to Anacortes by mid April, and allow myself time for the Colorado trip, I picked early March as a start time from LA.  I fully understand that if they have a hard winter like 2010, many of the mountain passes I hope to drive will be closed.  But, that is just one of the risks, and as Alaska is the primary aim of this trip, if the Colorado warm up is limited by weather, so be it.  I am working on the theory that the Americans are pretty good at keeping their main highways open, so if the worst comes to the worst, I will just have to stick to the main roads.  And if they get blocked, well I will just go find a bar somewhere and sit there until the road is cleared !!!  I am sure that won't be too hard !

So that is Part 1 and how the route was chosen.  I am only intending this to be a guideline - I am sure I will meet people along the way who will suggest better alternatives - I will listen to their suggestions and make any such changes along the way. So between the weather and subsequent suggestions, I could end up anywhere !!  (Some details of the route and estimated mileages etc for these sections can be found here https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/AustraliaToAlaskaInMyLotusElise?authkey=Gv1sRgCNHNic2dvLzhiQE#