We have taken two extended cross-country RV trips and a two-week New England tour since 2020. We’ve driven from Pennsylvania to South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah, and made layovers in many states in between.
This spring of 2023, we took a shorter trip south to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. We visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park and West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park, growing our “National Parks visited as a family” list to 12.
Our spring break trip seems like a lifetime ago, and we’re all suffering from some wanderlust. Driving home from our camping trip on Cape Cod recently, we talked whimsically about packing everything up and living on the road in our camper forever. About how happy we all are traveling with our home on wheels.
So, we’re scratching our road trip itch by planning the next epic adventure. After some deliberation as to whether our big goal destination should be Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas or Olympic National Park in Washington, we finally made our decision.
West coast or bust, baby!
Big Bend and all the stops on the way we considered (Mammoth Cave NP in Kentucky, Hot Springs NP in Arkansas, and Guadalupe Mountains NP, White Sands NP, and Carlsbad Caverns in western Texas and southern New Mexico respectively) will have to be visited on a later trip. Our decision also means that one of our favorite layover spots – the Keystone Lake Jellystone in Mannford, Oklahoma – is also off the table for this tour. Sigh. But we definitely won’t be coming home without a layover in Altoona, Iowa to visit our beloved Adventureland, and we’re super excited about that!
Setting Dates and Determining Our Trip Highlight
Our trips always revolve around the school calendar, so our only work in setting dates is making sure we don’t plan a depart date earlier than school will dismiss for the year. Our school district always starts in late August and the last day of instruction for the year has fallen before Memorial Day some years!
We get a lot of snow here, though, and so accounting for snow day make-ups that are tacked on to the end of the year can be tricky. This school year (2022-2023) was slated to end before Memorial Day, but snow days pushed well into June. We plan to give ourselves the better part of a two-week buffer from the originally planned end of school to account for snow days. And honestly, as skiers, we love the snow, so bring on the snow days!
As far as how many days we’ll spend on the road goes, our final itinerary will determine the exact dates, but preliminarily we’re estimating that we’ll be traveling somewhere between 30 and 35 days.
We have a system for planning these trips, and with so many National Parks on our bucket list, we decided to focus our next big trip on National Parks visits. But with both routes (south to Texas and New Mexico or northwest to Washington) offering SO many great National Park stops, our final decision on where to go was based less on one specific destination or National Park, and more on our deep love of the Pacific northwest.
Mike and I honeymooned to the Oregon coast. Well, actually, we honeymooned to Hayward Field in Eugene, OR for a track and field meet and then spent a couple of days on the coast. We do love track and field and Eugene, OR is tracktown USA.
We’ve been back to Eugene three more times since that honeymoon trip – each time for a track and field event, and each time we fell more and more in love with the area.
So, Pacific northwest by RV? Yes.
Our Skeleton Sketch Travel Map
The better part of our drive home from Cape Cod was spent on google maps mapping the distances from one place of interest on the route to the next.
Our first travel map was ambitious. Once we realized we’d be on the road over 40 days – and honestly feel pretty rushed and stressed I feared – we decided that the northern Michigan Isle Royale NP and northern Minnesota’s Voyageurs NP will have to be saved for another trip.
As of right now, our travel map will include:
- Theodore Roosevelt NP
- Glacier NP
- North Cascades NP
- Olympic NP
- Mt. Rainier NP
- Grand Teton NP
- Yellowstone NP
- Custer State Park (and I’ve cast a vote for a second visit to Badlands NP – we’ll see how much weight my vote carries, ha! But I’m definitely not coming home without another stop at Wall Drug!)
Our Next Trip Planning Steps
We’ve got a pretty good handle on the layovers we’d like to make on the way home to break up the trip. We’ll definitely spend two nights in Altoona, Iowa to visit Adventureland, and we’re leaning toward a final two night stop in Niagara Falls at the end of the trip.
But the way out is giving us a little bit of travel planning woes. 1600 miles of road stretch between home and Theodore Roosevelt NP. We’re fine with one night of dry camping on the way out, but we’ll definitely need a campground stop at some point of interest between here and North Dakota. We’re in the research phase and already have a few ideas.
Within the month, we’ll have to set a firm itinerary and start booking campsites. We know that campgrounds near National Parks (we’re especially worried about our Grand Teton/Yellowstone stop!) book up quickly, and many only open for reservations one year in advance, so we may book our first sites as early as this week.
Exciting stuff!
If you’ve traveled to any of these parks and have any tips to share – favorite campgrounds or favorite stops along the way – please leave us a comment. We’ll happily take any and all advice we’re offered!
