Then there’s crossing the country on a Segway. Sort of like a motorized version of Peter Jenkins’ Walk Across America, I suppose, but I don’t think it took as long. (The filmmakers on the Segway didn’t stop to work and to get married along the way.)
Some tips on pacing a road trip:
I don’t know if you’ve ever done road trips much outside New England, but for people from New England (or from England or western Europe), the scale of the journey could blow your mind. You can see the high points of New England in a week or two, with no more than a half day’s drive between points. To see the entire 48 states would take a minimum of one summer, to cover just the highlights. Just to see the highlights of California, spending enough time to actually enjoy them, not just trophy-hunt, would take weeks.
Cross-country trip, all the way out and back, at a leisurely pace–good luck fitting it all into just one month!!
After the 2004 Championship in Atlanta, my family took a 2-week road trip in regions east of the Mississippi. We felt like it was a whirlwind tour; we spent a lot of time driving, but only a half day in D.C. We had to skip Philadelphia altogether. (Our route was: Great Smoky Mtns., Blue Ridge Parkway, D.C., NYC, Rochester, Niagara Falls, Ohio, mid Kentucky, Tennessee, back to Atlanta.)
Lessons learned from that trip:
–Must allow time to do laundry, if you’re doing more than a quick hand wash/drip dry each evening (also allow time to FIND a laundromat)
–Late April/early May, the trees haven’t leafed out at higher elevations and latitudes, and there’s still ice at Niagara
–Really must plan long road trips more carefully (it’s the pacing!)
My parents, towing their trailer, took six weeks to join an Adventure Caravans Lewis & Clark tour. This included time to drive from the Los Angeles area to the St. Louis area, and time to drive home from Oregon at 55 m.p.h. or so. The tour itself seemingly covered EVERYTHING from St. Louis to Astoria, Oregon, including the Squirrel Cage Jail and the Harley-Davidson plant.
Tips on whether to make reservations:
We have learned that it can be critical to know when peak tourist seasons are in specific regions. If you can figure those out, either avoid them, or make reservations well in advance:
One October night, we stayed on a sod farm in upstate New York where we were the only guests, and we never saw another soul on the place the whole time we were there, not even the one staff person. But the next night as we pulled into Barre, Vermont, one motel after the other had tour buses in the parking lots, and No Vacancy signs everywhere. There was not one vacant room in town. We stayed with a local citizen who was involved in a Chamber of Commerce program to keep unprepared tourists like us from freezing in their cars, and ended up enjoying our stay.
On the other hand, we drove through Kentucky just before the Kentucky Derby, not realizing what date it was. But because we were headed for Mammoth Caverns, we were nowhere near Louisville. No problem!
Do you really want to visit Gilroy, California during their annual Garlic Festival?
Tips on planning National Park visits:
If you visit N.P.'s during the peak season (usually summer, except in Death Valley), you’ll need reservations way in advance (AAA membership is a definite advantage for this). Many National Parks are in remote areas, and you may have to drive for hours to find a place to stay outside the park if you don’t have reservations. However, if you go in the off season, or visit a less-popular park, you may be able to drive right in (but you should carry snow chains for Yosemite in fall, winter, and spring). One Fourth of July weekend, we obtained two premium camping spaces in Great Basin National Park by just driving in.
One more tip:
When traveling with children, it’s best to alternate days of all-day driving with days of stopping to see stuff. Teenagers, also, can only endure so much time cooped up in a vehicle. And adults can become mentally dazed after weeks of seeing one thing after another–it all starts to blur together. So don’t cram in too much, and be sure to keep a log book (written journals always work–don’t have to stay in a place with electricity).
On my travel wish list:
Every time we head home from Davis, California, there’s a highway sign at the western end of U.S. 50, in downtown Sacramento, that proclaims Ocean City, Maryland as being 3,073 miles away. Whenever I see that sign, I want to go straight on. Indeed, we have been on U.S. 50 from eastern Colorado to western Nevada. It’s billed as “The Loneliest Road in America.” It goes near Great Basin National Park, which is the loneliest N.P. we’ve ever visited. My dad was born in a little town on U.S. 50. Two of my aunts still live along that highway. I’ve seen lonelier roads (the one from Trinidad, Colorado, to La Junta, Colorado), but there’s something intriguing about seeing the destination of Ocean City proclaimed in my state’s capital. Such a little-known road to run from the nation’s capital to the capital of the most populous state!
