2 men taking tractor trip from Arlington to Alaska

Two Puget Sound residents are fulfilling a lifelong dream by taking a road trip from Arlington to Alaska — and not just anywhere in Alaska, but Prudhoe Bay. It’s a small settlement on the state’s northern coast within the Arctic Circle. Their pace on the ambitious trip? Fifteen miles per hour.

Jeff Newell and Ron Wachholtz are making the eight-week, 6,000-mile trip not by RV, truck, or sedan, but by tractor. Newell, who has belonged to several tractor clubs over the years, came up with the idea with his friends over three decades ago.

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“It’s something we’ve just always wanted to do … and I go, ‘What the heck, we’ll give it a shot,'” Newell said, speaking to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson from 1,500 miles away in Whitehorse, Yukon (CA) in transit to Alaska.

The trip to the Last Frontier does not just represent a long-planned-for adventure, however; Newell and Wachholtz are using the journey to raise money for Type 1 Diabetes, a disease with which Newell has lived since age 11.

“It’s a pretty devastating disease, and our hope is to raise some money to fund a cure for it, or help,” he said.

The two tractor trekkers have set up a GoFundMe account and hope to raise $500,000 during the course of the trip. At press time, they had earned over $9,000. Banners displayed on trailers pulled by the tractors alert everyone they pass to the mission of their journey from Arlington to Alaska.

“We’ve been fairly successful so far,” Newell said.

Before leaving, Newell rebuilt his 1957 Model 820 John Deere to be able to withstand the thousands of miles through rough terrain.

“They’re pretty reliable, these old John Deeres — they’re made to repair in the field, designed by farmers for farmers,” he said.

Spending the entire expedition from Arlington to Alaska on top of a John Deere is a “grueling experience,” according to Newell. He and Wachholtz are constantly exposed to the elements, which have included both hot temperatures in lower British Columbia and cooler nights the further north they get. They spend nights in the trailers they pull, since, at 15 miles per hour in rural areas, they are not always in range of a town or campsite when night is falling.

On the way back, the two plan to take a ferry from Skagway, north of Juneau on the Alaska Panhandle, back down to Bellingham.

Newell doesn’t listen to music while driving because it wouldn’t be audible over the noise from the tractor. Instead, the trip has given him the rare chance to be alone with his thoughts for 14 to 16 hours a day.

“You do a lot of thinking and that was part of it too,” he said. “You know, you go through life and you want to kind of think about things and clear your head and try to do something good, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Newell said his tractor musings range from seriously planning for the future with the business he owns, to playing a game of chess in his head.

All in all, at 56, Newell is glad to have the chance to achieve a goal that he’s thought of for over half his life.

“You go through life, you get a little older, you get more time … and now I’ve got a chance to do it,” he said.

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