Let's take a break from recapping the day to day of our travel to look at the logistics of this trip, which was quite the challenge to plan. Figuring out what to bring and where to put it was as difficult as figuring out where to go and what to do.
Planning
We started planning last November, focusing first on which cities and parks we'd visit. We had a family discussion about where everyone hoped to go, what types of things we wanted to do, and how long we were open to driving each day. I took that info and started mapping out some options, then we met again to discuss the options and adjust the plan. Among other changes, we chopped off an entire final leg during this review once we realized that our trip would be ~7 weeks long!
That left us with a plan for what city or park we'd be in each night of the trip, which was key to be able to book campsites when reservations open 6 months ahead. I had notifications on my phone to remind me each day reservations opened so I could be online and ready exactly at opening time, since they're popular and get booked quickly. We were able to get campsites everywhere except Glacier that way - they were all snapped up immediately by others! (We ended up camping just outside the park.)
Once we had all the campsites, I started booking the 14 different hotels we needed. I'll write about the total trip cost eventually, but will take a minute here to pat myself on the back for good hotel booking. 15 hotel nights, $718 total, BOOM. (Thank you, lazy credit card reward points.) We had two hotels that were not great - though clean and also not terrible - in smaller cities with limited options, but overall we stayed at a nice places, most with pools, breakfast, and a gym. Ruth was also very pleased that many of them had pull-out sofa beds so she could avoid Zadie rolling on top of her during the night. Hyatt hotels have a great transfer rate with Chase points, so we spent half of our hotel nights in Hyatt Places/Houses. I'm a big Hyatt fan now - their fitness centers were well-stocked and typically roomy, rooms had the sofas for Ruth, pools weren't freezing, and free breakfast buffets often had berry compote for my oatmeal and oat milk for coffee.
With the dates planned, we could take our time and spread out final research on each city/park. In a few cities, we knew exactly how we planned to spend the day (Space Center in Huntsville is one example), but we left a lot open to what we felt like doing each day. The only thing I wanted to avoid was arriving in a city without at least having some activity options known - I didn't want to spend our days googling what to do, especially when most of the time we were spending less than 24 hours in a given city.
There is - you'd say, "Of course!" if you know me - a spreadsheet with all this info, but for the car, I went old-school and put together a binder labeled "TRIP BIBLE." The trip bible had all the information we needed during the trip, with a page for each day listing where we were starting and ending the day, travel time, all reservation details, lists of plans/options for the day, and even high-level directions for when we might not have Google Maps available (atlas in car and some downloaded Google Maps for offline use helped too). Each day or so, we'd update that day's page with notes about what we did and any memories from the day. We need to start doing this for every trip - I'm sure we'll remember much more detail as a result! I have been referring to those pages a lot as I finish documenting the trip here.
Packing
Our car is a 2022 Kia Niro hybrid. It always surprises me that it's officially classified as a subcompact crossover because it feels big enough to me, but yeah - not a big car! On the plus side, it's one of the highest mileage hybrids at close to 50 mph, no small benefit given the high gas prices. Our goals were to keep the seating areas open so we weren't packed like sardines around our stuff, and to make it reasonably quick and easy to get in and out of hotels. We added a roof box to hold all the camping supplies, and Bill packed them so that the girls had one large duffle bag with their tent and everything they needed inside the tent (sleeping pad, small pillows, bedding, inflator, lights), and we had another duffle bag for us. Setting up camp was way easier this way with everything so well organized. That roof box became "the attic."
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| First day! |
We didn't have a spare tire in the car, so the space for it became "the basement." The girls groaned when I first started calling it this, but it stuck. Here we kept all the things we didn't need on a regular basis, such as extra food supplies (ex: Bill & I each prepped a month of oatmeal ingredients for breakfast in individual ziplocs to easily mix one up each day, so we'd keep some at hand and store the rest away), gifts/souvenirs, camping items we didn't always need, and our warm clothes. Each of us brought one space-saver bag with warm pants and sweatshirts/fleeces since it might get down to the 40s in some of the national parks. We stashed these all away in the basement and only needed to pull them out for the colder parks. Our coldest nights ended up being in the mid-50s.
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| The basement. |
In the trunk area, one side contained all the food - a large cooler, several pantry bins for various purposes, a bag with paper plates/bowls/napkins, and our utensils. The other side had one large bin for our clothes and laundry bag. Each of us had space only for two packing cubes plus one small bag, a backpack or duffel, empty other than our toiletries. When we got to a hotel, we'd each grab our bag, stick a packing cube inside, and head in. A separate tote held all our swimsuits and towels together. Having only a week's worth of clothes each meant we did laundry several times on the road, but overall, this system worked pretty well.
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| We can even see out the back window. :) |