Feeling Better – Plans Being Made

I just got done sunning on my back deck. It’s a balmy 80 degrees here in Virginia on this fine day in February – wait a minute – did I just say February?! Indeed I did and it felt great. As I mentioned in my last post, I had surgery and was dealing with recovery. Well I’m here to report that I’m feeling much better.

And with a good bill of health and no need for chemotherapy treatment, I know that my spring/summer plans can now move forward. And now that I’ve been feeling better, the travel bug is really biting hard! It’s all I can do not to go bust Perl out, fire her up and head on down the road.

Plans are being made…….

The next best thing that I can do is map out the crews spring/summer route. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been pouring over maps and plotting our journey in sync with an April-August calendar.

I’m trying to limit this trip out to four months. Essentially, I would like this trip to take half the time compared to our last trip west. So we will have shorter stops between getting to the ‘desired’ locations.

First off, it starts with a stop at two of the great lakes, Lake Erie and then Lake Michigan. September of 2015 we visited Lake Ontario. Three out of the five, not too shabby. That leaves us Lake Huron and Lake Superior which we’ll probably hit up when we get a chance to head into Canada.

After Lake Michigan, we’re going to beeline it to Yellowstone National Park, woohoo! I’m very excited about this and we’ll be staying well over a week. Reservations have been secured already as they book up fast! I’m also trying to book the popular state parks in advance as well.

Virginia to Yellowstone:

We’ll depart Yellowstone just before Memorial Day to Washington and the Oregon coast. My youngest wanted to see Oregon during our last trip out but sadly we couldn’t fit it in. So we will head towards the coast.

What I wanted to see last time were the huge redwood trees at Redwood National Park as well as Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California. We will hit up these things as we work our way down and then shoot east towards Reno.

Yellowstone to California:

The last highlight (for me anyway) is to head into Utah and check out Zion National Park and work our way northeast. By doing this we hope to cover Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches National Park. Not sure about the last two, we may have to hit up only one. If we pick one, it will be Arches National Park.

And of course we will be there at the hottest time of the year, July. So I’m not sure if I’ll rework our route. Maybe do Yellowstone then head down to Utah and work our way back up the coast. Just not sure. Flexibility is always key when you RV. Hey, that rhymes. One more time with me, “flexibility is always key when you RV”.

California to Kansas:

Kansas to Virginia is kinda boring so I’ll spare you that map. We have a lot of places to see this summer with a lot of miles to cover. We plan on leaving just after Easter and would like to be home by mid-August. We’ll see how things pan out.