Grand Road Trip 2013 Planning
I am getting close to visiting all of continental states in the US. Besides Alaska and Hawaii, I only have four other states left - North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho:
I have been thinking about doing one big road trip through those states for a while now. And it is time to finally do it! Besides, I need to be in Portland for the World Domination Summit in July anyways. So I figured I would take the second half of June to drive over there and "cover" these northern states along the way.
My very coarse timeframe at this point:
- Second half of June (no earlier than June 10) - Kansas City, Des Moines, Cedar Rapidsd and then up north and to the west!
- July 5-8 (give or take a few few days before/after) - World Domination Summit in Portland
- After that (2-3 weeks) - south to California and back east
There are plenty of cool national parks up north - the Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier National Park and the Badlands with Mt. Rushmore (been there, but wouldn't mind visiting again). So right now the plan is to drive through and camp out in the parks for most of the way.
Once I get to the west coast, I would like to drive along the coast from Portland all the way down to San Francisco (with a detour to Crater Lake). From there, it gets hazy as I could cut through Nevada into Utah and then go down to southern Utah to visit a ton of awesome national parks there or keep going down to Los Angeles (and maybe San Diego) before cutting back east towards Las Vegas (or Phoenix), revisiting the Grand Canyon, and checking out Petrified Forest National Park before going up to southern Utah.
From Utah, it will like be a drive through Colorado on the way back to Oklahoma.
Here is a very coarse outline of the route with green placemarks marking the places I am planning to visit and yellow placemarks are the ones I am considering/could be convinced to visit along (or not) the way:
View USA Roadtrip 2013 in a larger map
I am looking for partners in crime. Want to join me and explore these awesome parks? Been to these places and have suggestions? Anything along this route that I am missing? Leave a comment and let me know! I am excited to finally do this!