It's been a long time since I had a project that so consumed and obsessed me.
A cross-country road trip has been in the back of our mind for ages. With Ernest going to college in Boston this fall, it seemed like it was the time.
Oh we'll just camp on the way out said Handy, and we can just find motels on our way back. I'm skipping the camping park by flying to Boston. On a red eye, but splurging with first class!
Ernest's recent trip to Wyoming pointed out that one might actually need a reservation for a campground nowadays. En route, he told me he'd gotten a campsite at Zion but it turned out he just pulled off the road in the national park. Wisely, he did get a reservation for the way back.
Handy's experience in Bakersfield last year was clear evidence that making motel reservations is a good thing. Did I blog about that? Once again, at first I only heard the pretty part of the story. That the Vagabond Inn they checked into turned out to be questionable, so they found another place. Questionable means guys in their underwear drinking beer on the landing, parking lot drug deals, and well, the general description sounded like something out of Breaking Bad. Then they drove around for hours trying to find another place with a vacancy. No refund from the vagabonds, either.
These mistakes are not going to happen on this trip. Ernest reserved campsites for the journey east. Although I fear that in Cleveland they are leaving the hotel situation up to chance. At least they'll have a truck to sleep in.
Instead of having reservations, I have just been making them. From the East Coast to the West, I have a route and nightly stops. What we see in between is completely open, although I have mapped out the "must sees" like the ancestral grave site in New Jersey, three Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites and the Wigwam Motel in Arizona.
I'm not sure if I will live blog this or wait till I get back. My laptop is heavy and obsolete and I have
trouble with the Blogger app for iDevices. We'll see!
I made my last motel reservation tonight. We are good to go, a couple weeks ahead of time.
9 comments:
Godspeed! Take lots of photos! XO
What a cool trip!
Yeah, if somebody was telling me we could be camping I would be saying "or I could be flying first class and staying in a nice hotel, see ya there!" too :)
I've aged beyond camping (at least my body has!). When we did our cross country from IL to CA, we mapped it all out and had reservations for each night. The only bad part turned out to be in Nevada, since it's mostly empty, and the small towns are awful --we had a hotel reservation that turned out to be combined with a casino, and they cared a lot more about the casino than the hotel!
OOOOH it's going to be such a fun trip for you! Excited to hear about it no matter if it's before, during, or after :)
Bon Voyage! Sounds like a BLAST!
Funny how tough it has become to just head out without all the reservations, though. Takes the "footloose and fancy free" out of the road tripping.
You are smart to get the reservations. We now do it for any trip that has specific times and places where we need to be (spring break, moving across the country, camping at national or state parks). It takes a lot of stress out of the travel experience.
This is very exciting. I've driven cross-country five times. So many amazing things to see. Enjoy!
What an exciting trip!! Hooray!
I don't much like the Blogger mobile device either - it's good in a pinch, but I always end up editing it on my laptop.
I haven't camped in 27 years - my last time was when pregnant with my son! Cabins and trailers are as low as I'll go. Do get reservations and be comfortable. If you're sitting in the car all day, you need a comfy bed.
Can't wait to read about it!
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