Our Must-See Places

I took a quick family survey to see what everyone's must-see places are so we can be sure to make the most of our trip and make sure everyone is happy. Here is our list:

Jason and Brooke: Both of us are very excited to see everything, but we're most excited to "touch" the Pacific Ocean.

Beyond that, Brooke is excited about experiencing the Redwood trees. Jason is excited about seeing the Grand Canyon.

Evan: He's excited about all of it, but mostly about getting out to California.

Ella has three: visiting Field of Dreams, seeing California, and standing in 4 states at once at the Four Corners.

Blake has two: visiting Field of Dreams, and surfing down the Great Sand Dunes.

I find Ella and Blake's so funny. There isn't much to do or see between here and the Dakotas so we decided to watch the movie Field of Dreams and potentially get them excited about doing a quick stop at the actual field on our way out. It cracks me up that that's a highlight for them now.

Here we go!

 Life is a Highway....and I want to ride it, all night long...well, maybe not all night long! But my kids love that song and it only seems fitting for our upcoming trip. We have been wanting to take a big road trip out west for a while now. We were going to go in 2020 but Covid changed our plans and then again in 2021, but decided to wait another year. The summer of 2022 will be perfect for us because Evan and Ella still want to go with us and aren't working full time yet, plus Blake is in 4th grade. He has already gotten his 4th grade American the Beautiful National Parks Pass and we will get free admission to all of the national parks. Our family has been working on visiting as many national parks as we can, whenever we can, and this summer trip will check off many of them as we take the trip of a lifetime together.

We plan to leave the day after school gets out and head west with our trusty fiberglass Casita camper in tow. We'll take the northern route through a couple national parks in Ohio and Indiana and head towards the Badlands and Yellowstone. We look forward to visiting Oregon and California, and touching the Pacific Ocean. None of us has been this far west in the US so it's exciting. We'll spend some time in California and then head back through the big 5 in Utah and on to Colorado and back home. 

Right now, we are working on researching the national parks, driving routes, and campgrounds. We're working on preparing our car and camper for the long trip as well as ordering items that we will need along the way. I just bought some microfiber travel towels for us that take up less room, smaller camping/beach chairs, and even state tracker maps. I thought the kids might like to have a USA map that they can use to mark off as we visit different states. We'll be doing a lot of traveling so this might be a little something different to think about and get excited about....or maybe it's just me?! lol

It's only February, but I'll post here and there as we lead up to the amazing trip and then throughout the trip once we begin! We can't wait!

Here we all are when we drove to Texas to pick up our brand new Casita in June 2019.