We haven’t talked a lot lately about our upcoming trip in the last couple of months, but that doesn’t mean nothing is going on or that our plans have changed. On the contrary, we can not wait to get going and are continuing to look for ways to leave even sooner.

If you haven’t read our first couple of blogs posts yet, we have decided to make a major change, sell our house and explore the world full-time in an RV. We want to be able to live our life now before it is too late and while we can still fully enjoy it. Nature, adventure, and exploring the world around us have brought us a lot of peace and has helped us greatly to recover from some recent challenges in our life, so much so that we yearn for more of it. So why wait when we are able to do it now?

We have already spent extensive time planning our route and have actually planned our trip all the way through October 6th of 2023. It’s a complex process, we want a structure in place so we can plan accordingly but also want the flexibility to be able to be spontaneous whenever we want and adjust as we go. One of the major drivers of our need to plan is the current state of the RV market and State and National Park Traffic. Over the last few years, the RV market has exploded, and it has only gotten worse during COVID, as traditional travel became more challenging so families turned to RVs in order to travel and explore. While you used to be able to pull into an RV, State, or National Park at the last minute and grab a spot, most are sold out months in advance. This is especially true for the most popular sites and parks. So we need to plan our route as far out as we can to 1) ensure we can stay where we want and 2) have our pick of the best sites. While not as important as which park we stay at, staying at the best sites is an added benefit.

The complete route of the first leg of our Journey

Our route takes us from the Northeast in August of this rear, down the east coast and into Florida by October. We use a tool called RV Trip Wizard to plan our route. It is a powerful tool that has allows you to research individual parks, and then add them to a route. The tool has an RV-optimized mapping tool built-in. It will route you on roads optimized for RVs, no low bridges, no, truck restrictions, etc., so you can more comfortable that your route is safe for your to travel. It allows you to put in park costs and the number of nights you play to stay. Combined with mileage, it allows you to track your overall travel costs allow with providing you with a full itinerary of your route. It is our main planning tool, and we combine it with other resources like Campendium and Google for doing additional research. We also have an Evernote notebook where we keep a list of all of the interesting things that we want to do and see in each state as a reference. Traditional travel is fantastic but we are also true overlanders at heart and love to explore the backroads and remote sections of the world in our Jeep and any other means possible including, boating, and backpacking. So many of our sites of interest are natural features, national forests, and wilderness areas. Based on these points of interest we select the best parks and campgrounds central to these sites to use as a basecamp. That’s how we plan our trip.

Our plan is to leave the first week of August of this year. Our first stop will be a quick three nights in Washington DC. My wife and mother-in-law haven’t spent much time in the city and we want to rectify that. Our first true site of stay is Shenandoah River State Park, in Bentonville Virginia. According to their website, the park is on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and has more than 1,600 acres along 5.2 miles of shoreline. The park opened in June 1999. In addition to the meandering river frontage, the park offers scenic views of Massanutten Mountain to the west and Shenandoah National Park to the east. A large riverside picnic area, picnic shelters, trails, river access, and a car-top boat launch make this a popular destination for families, anglers, and canoeists. Twelve riverfront tent campsites, a campground with water and electric sites, cabins, camping cabins, and a group campground are available. With more than 24 miles of trails, the park has plenty of options for hiking, biking, horseback riding, and adventure. We have already booked and paid for our stay there!

One of the major attractions in the area is Shenandoah National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. There are multiple caverns including Luray, Shenandoah, and Skyline Caverns. Virginia is also home to George Washington & Jefferson National Forests. One of the reasons that we search for National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands wherever possible is that they provide the best access to offroad trails and dispersed camping. National parks on the other hand are beautiful and we want to visit them, but you need to stay on only the main roads and have limited flexibility where you can camp. In most National Forests there are hundreds of miles of trails and roads to explore and they offer dispersed camping, which means that you can camp wherever you want. This is our preferred method travel, we want to camp alone, and the more remote the better.

From there, our route continues all the way down into Florida. Our plan is to spend about 2 weeks at each site on most occasions. This gives us time to get settled and still be able to explore, relax, and enjoy ourselves. Traveling and driving constantly is extremely tiring. We plan to spend a little extra time in Florida and will work our way down the east coast to the Keys until working our way up the west coast into the Panhandle. My wife is a complete beach bum, and while I don’t hate the beach I would pick the woods and mountains any day of the week. Our route down the east coast works back and forth from the shore to the mountain and forests more inland.

In areas where there isn’t as much interest and places that we want to see we might only spend a few days. For example, after leaving Florida we will go pretty quickly through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisianna spending only about 3 days in each before arriving in Texas where we will spend Christmas and New Year. From there we quickly go through New Mexico and head straight for Arizona. New Mexico is actually one of our favorite states and has one of our favorite National Forests, Gila, but New Mexico can get pretty cold in January and February, and we will be looking to head somewhere a little warmer for now before revisiting when the weather is a little nicer.

We will spend most of January and the first half of February in Arizona in various places across the state. Our path across Arizona starts in the South East Corner in the Coronado National Forest outside of Tucson before working our way through to the Grand Canyon and Lake Havasu.

From there we head into Southern California and start our long trek up the west coast. As you probably know, California is huge! It is the third-largest state after Alaska, and Texas, runs almost 800 miles North to South and has over 840 miles of coastline. It’s also a state that overall we don’t know too well. We lived in the San Francisco area for two years and I have spent extensive time for business in the city as well. But outside of that, we have only spent minimal time in Los Angeles and San Diego, let alone the rest of the state and there is so much more to see. We have visited Yosemite but there are so many more sites to see. One thing we were disappointed that we never got to see while there were the Giant Sequoias. We will get another chance as we will be spending almost two and a half months in the state across six different campsites.

The Pacific Northwest is an area that we have always wanted to explore. Oregon and Washington are full of beautiful coastlines, stunning forests, and many opportunities for remote exploration. Just like the East Coast, our route up the West Coast alternates from taking us to the coastline before taking us back inland to the mountains and forests.

We have wanted to visit Olympia National Park for years!

This entire trip is a dream come true, and we will finally get to visit so many places that we have always dreamed of seeing. But our true bucket list dream trip will be coming next as we cross into Canada and up through British Columbia, the Yukon, and ultimately Alaska. We were so excited about Alaska that we initially considered heading straight there, but due to the time of year figured we would wait until it made more sense and the weather was more inviting. But it goes without saying that we cannot wait! It doesn’t get much more wild and remote than Alaska. Our list of places we want to see in Alaska currently stands at 40. From Denali National Park to the Dalton Highway, all of the Glaciers, and ultimately the Northern Lights!

That is a huge trip. This route as currently planned will take us from the first week of August of this year until October of 2023, from Maine, down the East Coast, across the Southern US, up the West Coast, into Canada, up into Alaska, and back to the US border.

What’s next? We will have to wait and see. Most likely we will explore the western middle of the country. Outside of Alaska, many of our dream locations are there, from Glacier National Park and greater Montana to Yellowstone and Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. We have spent a lot of time in Colorado as we lived there for over three years but there is so much more we want to see and can’t wait to get back as we never wanted to leave! As we mentioned earlier, New Mexico is one of our favorite states and will work our way down after visiting Colorado. But who knows at this almost two years away.

Want to know how it goes, what we like and don’t like? Want to see where we go next? Stay tuned and follow our story. We would love to have you join us along for the ride! We can’t wait to get going and hopefully you can’t either.

So stay tuned, more updates to come shortly!

Update On Our Trip and Plans for 2022 and Beyond

Custom Jeep Storage Platform

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