The Schedule....

I’ve done it! I’ve planned where we are going and when! This is a huge step for me, and I’m close to being able to book our camp sites. I didn’t book them yet, because originally we were going to stay at KoA’s the entire way. But looking at some of the rates, it might be cheaper to find alternatives. But now that I know where we’re going, I can research other campsites in the surrounding area. We still might stay at KoA every once in a while, because some of them have free shuttles to the surrounding attractions. So if there’s something we know we want to do in the evening after we’re done driving, we can take the shuttle over to something fun. Like Mt. Rushmore! Or something like that…

We’ll be leaving Bellingham the night of August 3rd to drive to Seattle. We’re attending a wedding there on the 4th, and we’ll take some time spending with family before we leave. Early on Sunday morning the 5th we’ll leave from Seattle and take I-5 to Portland, at which point we’ll cut across to Hwy 101, and take 101 to Crescent City, CA. Might as well make it scenic! We’ll spend the night near Crescent City, and then do the scenic drive through the Redwood forests the next morning.

From there, we’ll cut over to Redding, then continue past toward Reno and Lake Tahoe. We have a friend in Reno we can go visit, so that should be fun. We’ll spend the night there, then head toward Las Vegas the next morning. I’m not sure if we’ll stop in Vegas or not, but ultimately we’re heading past Vegas to Kingman, AZ. Kingman is only a 2 hour drive from the Grand Canyon, so we’ll stay there.

The next morning we’ll drive over to the Grand Canyon’s south rim, and take the 26-mile drive along the rim. That leads us nicely toward Tuba City on the way to 4 corners. It’s recommended to see the Grand Canyon earlier in the day or later in the day, so we plan on being done there by late morning. I know it’s not much time, but it’s a whirlwind adventure! We’ll only take enough time at 4 corners to take a picture, and say we’ve been to Utah and New Mexico. From there we’ll head toward Colorado Springs. We’ll spend the night there.

After Colorado, we’ll head due East, staying in Missouri and Kentucky on our way to Virginia. At this point for us it’s just a lot of driving. We’ll be staying with our friend Geoff in Virginia for Saturday night through Thursday. He stayed with us last summer, so we’re crashing with him. He’s planning some day trips and sight seeing for us while we’re there. The plan is on Thursday to go to Washington D.C. where he’ll show us around. I’m not sure where we’ll stay, either with his friends there or we’ll camp near there. On Friday we’ll part company with Geoff and head up to Connecticut.

We’ll get to Connecticut Friday night, and spend some time with friends there. On Saturday a bunch of our friends are having a party, so we’ll attend that, and meet a lot of our friends that we’ve only talked to. On Sunday morning we’ll have brunch with them, then head up into New York. We’ll spend the night somewhere mid-state, then on Monday morning make our way to Buffalo, NY. We’ll spend time with Dad and Paula on Monday night and on Tuesday, and leave from there early on Wednesday morning.

From Buffalo, we’ll make a couple of stops on our way home, in Illinois and Minnesota most likely. We’ll try to time it so that we’ll also spend the night in South Dakota near Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. That way when we’re done driving for the day we can go walk around and sight see. At least a little. After South Dakota, we’ll make one more stop in Montana before making our way back into Seattle on the 26th. We’re not sure if we’ll make it all the way to Bellingham, or stay in Seattle, that’s kind of a see how it goes thing.

So that’s it! We’ll see a ton, but not stay long anywhere. For my first major road trip, I just want to see a lot. Then when we have more time to travel, I’ll know where I want to spend more time exploring. And we want to do this on a budget too, so that means not spending that much on attractions.

Also on that, our spending money is going to postcards of places we’ve been. We’re also going to try to have more food in our car, and less eating at restaurants. When we do eat at restaurants, we’re going to go to ones we can’t get near home!

Enough of that for now. I do have this plotted on a map, and if you’d like to see it let me know. I’ll try to email you the link. Try being the operative word!.

Much love - M