Dear reader - and here I'm speaking primarily to myself, as I'm writing mainly to document these memories for my own future enjoyment - I must apologize. I barely captured anything here about our Costa Rica trip in summer 2024, and nothing at all about our two weeks in Prague and Vienna in 2025. Maybe someday I'll catch up, but in the meantime, let's forge ahead!
This summer we're staying in the US. Time for a nearly 6-week long road trip! Why now? Ruth will be a senior in high school next year, so this might (?) be the last time we can all do such a long trip together. Bill quit his job in April (yay for FIRE, aka Financial Independence / Retire Early... but that's a whole separate post), so we've got this short window where we all have the time freedom to do it.
Here's the plan:
Leg 1 - Raleigh west to Denver. We'll visit Asheville, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Great Sand Dunes National Park along the way.
Leg 2 - North through the National Parks. We'll camp in Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks, with a few nights in hotels traveling in between.
Leg 3 - East through Montana and the upper Midwest, with stops in Great Falls, Billings, Rapid City, Badlands (/Devil's Tower/Mount Rushmore), Sioux Falls, and Minneapolis.
Leg 4 - Family time in Michigan, with time in Escanaba and metro Detroit.
In all: 38 days, 4 people in 1 small Kia Niro, 19 states, 7 national parks, 12 nights of camping, 10 nights visiting family, lots of museums and monuments, and hopefully 0 close encounters with bears.
If you've been to any of these places and have tips, we'd love to hear them!