Well it’s less than 30 days until we leave for our Big Adventure. Our plan is to head West on April 11, 2011 and spend 6 weeks on the open road, jumping from National Park to National Park like two love-struck gypsies. From West Texas we will head through New Mexico and Arizona, drive up the coast of California, and into Oregon and Washington. From there, we will head back south through Wyoming and Utah, stopping at National Parks along the way.
This trip has been a long time in the making. We first started dreaming about a huge National Parks trip when we were just getting to know each other back in April 2010. It seemed we had both been thinking up a cross-country adventure before we met; Megan’s original plan was to drive up the northwest coast along Highway 101, camping at parks along the drive. Jack had often dreamt about packing up his tent and his yellow lab, Purtis, and disappearing for a few months in Alaska. After we met and realized we both had the same dream, we figured out that we had the means to take a big trip like this; Megan knew she would have a few months off at the end of medical school and Jack works 9-10 24-hour shifts at the fire station each month, which he can easily trade with co-workers to get large amounts of time off. Once we realized we had a least a month to travel, we started dreaming of all the places we could go…Olympic National Park in Washington, Yosemite in California, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and Arches and Zion National Parks in Utah. We decided to drive a huge loop around the western United States and hit all of these in one trip.
Our schedule (which is COMPLETELY tentative and will most likely change many times based on weather, how much we feel like driving, etc) is listed below:
April 11- Leave Dallas. Drive to Guadalupe Mountains National Park (West Texas)
April 12- Hike until noon. Drive to Saguaro National Park (Arizona).
April 13- Saguaro N.P.
April 14- Drive to Joshua Tree N.P. (California). Spend the afternoon hiking.
April 15- Drive to Sequoia / King’s Canyon N.P. (California)
April 16- Sequoia / King’s Canyon N.P.
April 17- Drive to Yosemite N.P.
April 18- Yosemite
April 19- Yosemite
April 20- Yosemite
April 21- Yosemite
April 22- Drive north on Highway 1, stop to camp at a state park north of the San Francisco Bay Area
April 23- Drive to Redwood N.P. (California)
April 24- Redwood
April 25- Redwood
April 26- Redwood
April 27- Drive to Tillamook National Forest (Oregon) and camp for the night
April 28- Drive Olympic N.P. (Washington)
April 29- Olympic
April 30- Olympic
May 1 – Olympic
May 2- Start driving east toward Wyoming; pit-stop in Idaho National Forest for the night
May 3- Drive to Yellowstone N.P. (Wyoming)
May 4- Yellowstone
May 5- Yellowstone
May 6- Drive to Grand Tetons N.P. (Wyoming)
May 7- Grand Tetons
May 8- Grand Tetons
May 9- Leave Wyoming and drive south toward Utah; pit-stop Dinosaur National Monument
May 10- Drive to Arches N.P. (Utah)
May 11- Arches
May 12- Arches
May 13- Drive to Zion N.P. (Utah)
May 14- Zion
May 15- Zion
May 16- Drive to Bryce Canyon N.P. (Utah)
May 17- Bryce Canyon
May 18- Start the drive home; stop in Grand Canyon N.P. or Petrified Forest N.P for the night
May 19- Return to Dallas
We originally thought about tent camping at parks along the way, but when we thought about the weather extremes that we would face in April and May at elevations of 6000 feet and higher, we realized tent camping would get old (and cold) after the first few weeks. That led us to the idea of buying a travel trailer to tow behind Jack’s truck. We spent hours upon hours searching Craig’s List and other used RV websites for a good deal and realized it was pretty difficult to find a relatively small camper (19 foot or shorter) in Texas; people these days like to “camp” in luxury with their 30+ foot 5th-wheel trailers with all the amenities of being at home. We knew we didn’t need anything quite this big, and after months of searching, we came across a 2007 19-foot Fleetwood Pioneer that was a perfect fit for us.
Living in a camper turns out to be far more complicated than it sounds. Virtually all national parks allow RV’s, but there’s no electricity or water to hook up to; you have to have your own portable sources of electricity, water and heat. Outfitting the camper to allow us to be self-contained for days at a time became the next challenge. Propane will supply our heat and cooking power, a portable gas powered generator will recharge our batteries and give us higher electric power for a few hours each day, a propane water heater will allow for showers, and a deep cycle car battery will give us just enough power to run small lights at night. We have three separate 40-gallon tanks for clean and dirty water to be held in. After a trial camping trip to Ray Roberts Lake State park last week we discovered how to work things, what needed to be fixed, and some potential issues that need addressing……more projects!!
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| The inside of our camper- where we'll be living for 6 weeks! |
We’ll keep this blog updated throughout our journey with pictures and stories, so check back regularly!
If you want to see more pictures from our journey, visit our picture website on Shutterfly: Adventures of Jack and Megan - Pictures website
If you want to see more pictures from our journey, visit our picture website on Shutterfly: Adventures of Jack and Megan - Pictures website
Jack & Megan
