One of the things confronting all Peace Corps invitees is how to put their life on hold for 27 months, and what that means for their own situation. Luckily for me, it is relatively easy, as I don’t own a home, don’t have credit card debt, don’t own a car and don’t actually have that much stuff. The stuff that I do have, I can easily store at my folks’ place while I’m gone. The only difficult part to that is that I currently live on the West Coast, with my stuff including my dad’s car, and they live in Michigan. Which means, road trip. And I want to take plenty of time to complete this trip and gorge myself on all that America has to offer before I leave.
Today, I sat down with an atlas and Road Trip USA by Jamie Jensen to map out my route and figure out where I would need to put out some Couch Surfing requests, how many National Parks I would be visiting to see if the annual pass would be a worthwhile investment and to budget.
Here is my tentative itinerary:
Leave Portland, Ore. on November 26 and take the coastal highway down to Redwood National Park. Stops along the way are to include Devil’s Punchbowl and Prehistoric Gardens. Camp among the redwoods for two nights. Make my way down to Eureka, Calif. and cut east across the state to Lake Tahoe. Make my way down to Yosemite National Park and camp for two nights there.
Cut across Nevada past the Nevada Test Site on what my atlas has labeled as the Extraterrestrial Highway and make my way to Cedar City, Utah. From there spend a day and night at Zion National Park and another day and night at Bryce Canyon National Park. From there head south and spend the night on the North Rim in Grand Canyon National Park.
From there make my way down to the Mother Road, Route 66 and start that leg of the journey in Flagstaff, Ariz and hopefully visit the Lowell Observatory. I’ll continue on from there stopping in Gallup, NM and hoping to stay at El Rancho. I’d like to stop at Inscription Rock and then stay in Albuquerque, NM. From there, to get the old time feel of Route 66, I hope to grab a bite at Joseph’s (formerly Club Cafe) and stay in Tucumcari, NM, maybe at one of the historic motels like the Blue Swallow Motel.
Then on to Texas, where I will probably stop in Adrian, Tex. at the Midpoint Cafe, which is exactly 1,139 miles from Los Angeles and Chicago, the termini of the historic route. I’ll spend an evening camping at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. (I love camping!) I will have to stop and see Tex the Giant Cowboy, of course. I also want to see Cadillac Ranch. Maybe stop at the Devil’s Rope Museum.
Then into Oklahoma and a stay in Oklahoma City. From there, across the 14 miles of the historic route in Kansas and on to Springfield, Mo., St. Louis, and into Illinois where I think it’d be neat to see the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle. Finally ending that leg of the trip in Chicago, probably with a visit to some friends from college. From there, it’s a short half day’s drive back to my folks’ place in the suburbs of Detroit.
If you have any suggestions of must see places along the way, let me know!