The Great American Roadtrip

While growing up in the US, my family didn’t travel a lot. With a family of 7 flying wasn’t an affordable option and driving with that many kids in the car also meant long trips were also not so attractive. We spent a lot of time exploring the beautiful state parks of Minnesota. Even after college I didn’t myself do much travelling, so the high amount of travelling I do now didn’t start until moving to Amsterdam. But since then I have had a dream of doing the great American road trip and with this time off I am now getting that chance. My parents have graciously offered up their motorhome and we plan to do 3 months exploring the American West.

Our main destinations will be the US National parks, with lots of local state parks and forest lands to check out along the route. We will also be stopping at a few cities along the way to visit friends and family. It will be exciting to see how we like travelling with a motorhome and if we want to continue this form of travel when we visit New Zealand and Australia.  The route we have planned out is in the first image, but its really just a rough guide, in this form it is already 15000 miles long.

We have very little planned for the trip, but I have been tagging all interesting points on google maps for years, its a mix of restaurants and locations that I would like to visit. I don’t expect to visit them all, I am just using them as a rough guid for our trip. If you have any recommendations, I would love to hear them, add them in the comments below.

https://goo.gl/maps/eHLd7W1ZPcy2Lm3KA

I am most excited to see Yellowstone, Yosemite and the canyonlands of Utah while Charissa is excited about those plus Napa Valley and the city stops. But mostly I am just looking forward to hitting the road without a plan and figuring it out as we go. As a friend advised “Don’t plan too much, allow time to let serendipity lead the way, those will be the experiences you really remember.”