As most things in 2020, travel has taken a turn from the usual. Our trip to Spain was cancelled, and we have stayed near home for most of the year. My oldest daughter has talked me into putting on my face mask we are getting ready to masquerade across America. The big cross-country road trip is only a few weeks away. My daughter and I plan on tag-teaming a 24-hour drive from central Virginia to Denver, Colorado. In Denver, we plan on spending the night in a hotel before leaving the next morning for Moab, Utah, where we plan on camping for two nights while visiting Arches National Park and Canyonland National Park.
After that, we will traverse across the state to set up camp in Cannonville, Utah, for three nights where we will visit and hike in Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. After that, we will head back home, stopping for the night in Amarillo, Texas. We will leave early the next morning to drive to Memphis, Tennessee, where we will spend our last night on the road. We will leave the following morning for home. Round trip, it will be >5,000 miles through 15 states!
It is an aggressive schedule, but we believe it is doable. It is hard to imagine all we will see on a trip of that magnitude. We will take the truck so we can pack in all the camping gear, and possibly bring the bicycles. When telling some people at work about our plans, they said that at least we lay could lay down in the back seat of the truck to sleep while the other one was driving – then I informed them that it was a standard cab pickup. We are riding coach across America!
We will be camping, cooking, driving, hiking, and biking. We plan on eating a steak in Kansas City, tacos in Sante Fe, and ribs in Memphis.