When this year started, we were certain that we'd be going to Hawaii.  I went to Barnes and Noble and purchased a Hawaiian travel guide and started doing research on the islands.  There is only one place to skydive in Hawaii - that's on Oahu, but Matt and I want to go to the volcano on the Big Island.  In addition to our plans, we were trying to coordinate a trip with my parents.  We quickly discovered that it would be hard to take advantage of their time share with such short notice.  In the end, Hawaii got pushed into 2016.  Since our goal is to finish all 50 states before the end of 2016, we decided to tackle Alaska this year.

Back to Barnes and Noble for an Alaskan travel guide.  The book Matt picked out is an awesome resource!  As I started making a list of the things we'd like to do while we were in Alaska, two things occurred to me.  One.. there isn't enough time to do everything and Two...there isn't enough "fun" money in our budget.  I created an extensive list of things we wanted to do in Alaska - see a glacier, see a grizzly bear in person, take a tour by airplane to the top of a mountain, etc.   After adding up the cost for flights, car rental, hotels, flight seeing, etc., I realized that our Alaskan dream vacation would need to happen at another point in time.  However, something good did come out of this initial planning phase.

Doing the research on flights, I discovered a number of flights to Alaska stop in Seattle.  I priced out the airfare separately.  It really isn't that much more expensive to fly to Seattle stay for a few days and then go on to Alaska.  In fact, one of the trips I priced out was cheaper than going to Alaska only!  Our trip has now evolved into a multi-state skydiving adventure - Alaska, Washington and Oregon!

We'll fly into Seattle on a Wednesday with a goal of skydiving in Oregon and Washington state before flying from Seattle to Alaska on Friday.  We'd like to skydive in Alaska on Saturday and spend Sunday sightseeing before we hop on a plane to come home.  I've already spent two full days researching flights and I am driving myself crazy.  

If we leave from IAD, we can take direct flights.  That sounds nice, but we will have to drive home from IAD when we get back from Alaska.  After spending an entire day traveling, am I going to want to get in the car and drive 90 minutes to get home?  If we leave from Richmond, it's more expensive, but we'd have flights that stopped along the way.  Is this better?  We'd be able to grab a bite to eat and stretch our legs.  It cost about $300 more, but we'd have a quick drive back to our house.

It's very hard to push the confirm purchase button.  What if I buy the tickets and the weather is crappy?  The cost for our flights is not cheap.  It's just one component of the total.  Do leave the airport with a car rental or do I come back the next day to pick up a car?  We'd just be paying for 12 hours of car rental while we are sleeping?  If we end up at an airport hotel, we could take the shuttle back and forth.  Only one of us would have to go back to get the car the next day.  So, we wouldn't have to worry about schlepping our luggage back again.  It just seems like there are so many things to decide.

What do I do when I am completely overwhelmed from planning a trip?  Take a break!