Saturday, May 21, 2011

Trip Outline

Our dream for the Great American Road Trip is to see and enjoy as much of America's great outdoors as we can.  In order to do this we will:
- Avoid interstate highways as much as possible.
- Camp and picnic as much as we can.
- Avoid national food chains when stopping to eat.
- Stop in small towns, just because.
- Avoid heavily populated areas and large cities, with a few exceptions.
- Visit as many National Parks, Points of Interest, Historical Monuments, and Local Oddities as we can.
- Talk to the locals.

As we dream and scheme at this point, our trip will consist of the following legs:
1) Cambridge, NY to Nashville, TN via the Shenandoah, Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smokies.
 - In Nashville we plan to visit Financial Peace Plaza, (well, it's actually in Brentwood, which is just south of  Nashville).
2) TN to Santa Fe, NM via Hot Springs, AR and Historic Route 66
3) Santa Fe, NM to Las Vegas, NV via various national parks such as Petrified Forest, Zion, Canyon Lands, etc.
 - We may splurge in Vegas and spend a night or two in a hotel with an indoor pyramid or something, just to be different.
4) Vegas to Olympia, WA via Death Valley, Yosemite, Rte 101 and Mt. St. Helens
 - We'll spend some time in Olympic National Park before heading East.
5) WA to the plains via either Yellowstone or Glacier, TBD.
6) The plains to NY via the Lincoln Highway and anything but I-80/90.

We plan to spend at least 4-5 days on each leg, meaning that the whole trip will easily take a month just to drive.  As Caleb is a teacher and we have most of June, July and August to do this, we aren't worried about time at all.  We hope that you'll be able to clear your schedule for at least some of the summer and come join us, wherever we are!

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