Where am I going?

The journey begins on May 1, 2021. Wolfie, Zenyatta, and I will depart Houston and spend 164 days on the road, returning on October 11th. Developing the itinerary has been a labor of love, one that I’ve principally finished as of this week. The final count is 42 reservations or arrangements made, so that I know where I’ll be spending each night along the way. I’m a skilled travel agent at this point and now have my credit card number memorized.

It began innocently with buying three National Parks books and a map as a birthday present to myself this past September. It quickly became a nine month trip that included Canada and Alaska in a camper van. Not wanting to gamble with any travel restrictions in and through Canada, I made the decision to shorten the journey to six months, stay within the continental US, and the van became a travel trailer.

I quickly realized that the US is a lot bigger than you think and you can’t drive as many miles each day when towing a camper. I had a wish list of everything that I wanted to see and do and had to make the tough decisions about what got scratched from the list and how to maximize the route while still spending enough time in each place to relax and enjoy it. I drew on maps for a couple of weeks and then one October weekend it turned into Post-it notes all of the floor. After thoughtful pruning, the Post-its were collected in order of the route and became what is today a massive spreadsheet. Once in the spreadsheet, mileage and travel times were figured out and I spent everyday, all-day of a four day Thanksgiving break making adjustments until I finally had an itinerary and could start researching RV parks and making reservations. That has been its own full-time job that I’ve squeezed into every bit of free time since December.

There will be times on this journey when I’ll wish that I had more flexibility to stay at one place longer or check-out a location that I learn about, however I know that I’ll be grateful that I’ll not have to think about where to go next or miss out on anything that I’ve always wanted to see. RVing has become extremely popular so it was also nice to get the jump on others and have reservations in prime locations that are now fully booked for the season.

However, now I have to figure out what I’m going to do and where I’m going to eat at each location. If you have favorite hikes or recommendations please share. The list of locations is provided below.