We were supposed to go to San Diego next week, but we decided to cancel given the situation with the pandemic. Incidentally, things are opening up in San Diego this week, so we honestly might have been able to go. But now it will wait until next year. Once TJ agreed we could use our tax return to visit friends in San Diego, I decided that if I was going out west, I had to see the Grand Canyon. That decision snowballed into our first road trip, which included fly to San Diego, Joshua Tree National Park, Sedona AZ, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Vegas (briefly), fly home. Since it is postponed, I might make it even bigger and longer, but we'll see.
Since we had to cancel, I started dreaming and planning lots of hypothetical road trips. It became my new hobby. It really was all hypothetical until I saw a few weeks ago that the Ark Encounter in Kentucky was opening up in June. I decided that would be our trip this summer. And thus began planning our actual first road trip. TJ has to take a class this summer, so we had to plan around that. Once he is finished with his class, we will leave about a week later at the end of July.
This road trip has been a lot more difficult to plan than our trip out west because the landmarks are less famous. It has required A LOT of time of research. But our general itinerary is this:
Day 1: A few hours in Pittsburgh, then drive to Hocking Hills State Park and set up camp
Day 2: Hocking Hills hiking and relaxing
Day 3: Pack up camp and drive to Cincinnati for the day, motel in KY
Day 4: Big Bone Lick State Park and Ark Encounter, motel in Louisville
Day 5: Explore Louisville
Day 6: Lexington to Red River Gorge for camping
Day 7: Explore Red River Gorge
Day 8: Pack up camp and drive to Hawk's Nest State Park WV, drive to Waynesboro, VA for motel
Day 9: Drive up Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, stop at Luray Caverns, drive home.
And I just wrote that all from memory. This has truly been my obsession for the last two weeks or so. I'm okay with that. See, I think that the more you can plan, the less you will be floundering during the trip. Floundering wastes time, and if I only have a day in Louisville, I better know what we want to do there. Once we go on our trip, I will be able to post more about our itinerary and how things went, given that we have three littles to contend with.
For now, here are a few tips I have if you are interested in planning a family road trip:
1. Figure out the main destination for your trip. For our west coast trip, that was Grand Canyon. For this summer's trip, it's the Ark Encounter. With this main destination set, you can use Google Maps to see what else is on the way or nearby. It can be really time consuming, but if you see a nearby city or town along the route that sounds familiar, look it up on tripadvisor.com to see if there is anything interesting to do in that area.
2. Join roadtrip facebook apps. I joined two roadtrip apps on facebook that have been so incredibly helpful! The people on these groups are seasoned travelers and can lend lots of advice on routes to take and things to do in any state. I appreciate the first hand advice that they give. The two groups I joined are "See the USA via Roadtrips" and "The All American Roadtrip Group." You can either ask a question or do a search to see previous discussions on the state or city that you want to visit. There are also lots of forums on Tripadvisor where you can do a search or ask a question.
3. Another great website/app is RoadTrippers. You can create a route on this website and select what kind of places you are hoping to find along the route, such as historical places, photo op places, good restaurants, nature, etc. There is a paid version that allows you to create an itinerary that includes all the places you discover, but keeping it cheap, I just browse for interesting places and write it all down.
4. Figure out your budget. Originally, I wanted to do this trip in under $1,000. Which we could do if we didn't make a lot of stops, but the cost went up quickly with each day added. Ultimately, I decided to extend the budget a little (since we could) because I didn't want to have to skimp on the cool activities along the way. We are keeping the budget lower because will be camping for half of the time, or maybe even a little more than half. Camping wouldn't be my first choice, but it definitely keeps costs a lot lower! Plus, I think that camping in the parks is a great way to experience them. We will also be bringing a lot of food with us and eating out less. Again, not as fun. But you have to decide what is most important to you when traveling and what you can go without. Experiencing local food is a great aspect of traveling, but if I have to choose, I choose landmarks and museums over food.
5. For hotel rooms, consider staying further out of the city for cheaper prices. Expedia has a nice app where you can search for your city of interest, and they have a map with various prices on it with where the hotels are located. Our current conundrum with this trip is where to stay when we go to Louisville. If you stay in downtown Louisville, you have to pay to park in a parking garage (and possibly other places if you drive your car somewhere). If you stay further outside of the city, you may not pay to park while at the hotel, but it will be less convenient. Or do we camp outside of Louisville as well? We haven't hammered down this detail at all yet!
Those are just a few tips for beginning to plan a road trip. We have a month and a half until we go, and I can't wait to see more and more of this beautiful country. It's nice to have something to look forward to!
