Planning our Epic Summer Roadtrip

This is our idea of epic.

I’m not sure what got all this started, but it’s happening. A few months back we made the decision to take the kids on an epic roadtrip over the summer break. Let me clarify, I’m taking the kids on this adventure. Josh is staying home to work and pay for us to be able to do this. He’s going to join us along the way a few times. Hopefully. At first it was all excitement. Look at al the places we are going to go! How awesome is it going to be to give our kids’ these experiences. And then it set in. 7 weeks living on the road was going to take a LOT of planning.

Reality sets in.

Originally, I as going to wing it. I wanted to create a route but figure out where to stay along the way - mainly camping on BLM land (public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management). It’s free and is perfect if you are dry camping. But over the last few weeks I realized that this free-spirited nomad strategy wasn’t the best. First, there was Josh. If he was going to fly across the country to meet us we needed to know when we would be where. Then there was the fact that we were traveling to the Northwest during peak season and to and some fo the areas I wanted to stay required reservations. The idea of wandering aimlessly through the Redwoods on July 4th, looking for somewhere to sleep, with the kids wasn’t pleasing. And finally there was the safety concern. A woman and two kids sleeping out of their car. As much as solitude sounds magical, being around a few other people would probably be safer. The key is to be around safe people I guess…

The planning begins.

Being that I’ve never planned a 7 week trip anywhere, especially living out of a car, I had no idea where to start. So I did what most seasoned travelers do and Googled it. I found an article from a guy who mapped out the best way to see all the national parks on one trip. (Spoiler: we aren’t doing that.) It eventually led me to the Roadtrippers website. I must have used this sometime in the past but I had forgotten about it. I found someone who mapped all the national parks as the Great American Roadtrip, copied it and renamed it. Over a few weeks I started saving images on Instagram and Pinterest. Adding stops to my map. Taking ones off that weren’t that important. I had no idea how long this would take. I

When I finally started to look at the logistics, I knew I had a problem. There wasn’t enough time. The Utah portion of the trip was going to take at least a week and I didn’t want to rush it. Quite impulsively, Josh and I decided to separate Utah/Grand Canyon from the summer trip and booked flights to Salt Lake City for spring break. During Easter. Obviously the perfect time to head to an already busy area. Doing this would free up time over the summer, allow us to enjoy Utah away from the summer heat, and have Josh join us. I will write a separate post just on the Spring Break traveling as it is completely different. We are sleeping in hotels and cabins! Yay!

Once we removed Utah, the trip started looking more possible. The cool thing about Roadtrippers is that it adjusts your route as you update your stops. It calculates estimates hours of travel and money spent on gas. You put in your car and MPG. It still seemed like a stretch with our time constraints (school getting out in June and kids booked for sleep away camp in August). I ultimately pulled most of the East Coast locations out and decided that was a whole different trip. By the time I got it a place I felt good, I started meticulously figuring out the days.

The reason I loved the Roadtrippers site is that not only does it give me visitor info and photos for each stop, but it calculates the individual times from stop to stop. This was super helpful as I got my spreadsheet going. It was definitely a puzzle. Guessing how many hours we would want to drive each day. When we needed to find a midway point to stop. When we needed to just have a long day. I have no clue if this is right. But it is what we are going with. I haven’t factored in where we will do our laundry or buy groceries. Some things I’m going to have to wing or I will go crazy. All in, the trip is 51 days. Over 7 weeks on the road. Here we go!

Instagram for the win!

We’ve obviously camped before and know that popular campgrounds fill up as soon as reservations are open. Unfortunately, I had no clue which campsites these were, when they opened for booking or even where I wanted to go. As much as social media has created major problems in today’s society, it has saved my butt for this trip. If you aren’t following, you can see all our travel adventures on our family Instagram account: @theunpluggedfamily As I started finding other families traveling, I learned and asked questions.

One person gave me a ton of resources including the most important, the Campendium website and app. This tool has saved me countless hours. I haven’t actually used any of the campsites, yet, so I will have to report back after the summer. It’s a database of campsites with reviews, photos and information generated by users. Basically a Yelp for campsites. The best thing is that you can sort in tons of ways: location, price, type of land, ratings, volume of reviews, etc. I’m able to go in and specifically look for free BLM camping near a specific national park. It’s awesome.

I also started following several hashtags on Instagram. When I saw a cool spot I would save it and cross check it with Campendium. I’ve added a few sites to our plan from that. With my handy Google Sheet I’ve created a list of every single night with campgrounds. Most of them I am not making reservations. If it’s a place I really want, I’ve reserved them. Most sites I’ve chosen won’t fill up, especially in the heat of summer.

Where did I book ahead of time?

I haven’t done them all yet, but I’ve done the ones I care the most about. Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is one place I knew I wanted to stay. It looks beautiful and I heard the campground was great. As soon as I realized we would be there July 4th, I freaked out. Sure enough they were completely booked. I had built in two nights for the Redwoods (July 4th and 5th) but planned to stay in two different campgrounds. (Since we are living out of your car, it doesn’t make much sense to return to the same campground unless we are using public transportation - will see if I’m right!) I checked July 5th and sure enough there WAS a free campsite. I snatched it and started looking for a second campground. Elk Prairie seemed to be the other highly coveted place and I found an awesome site there for July 4th. The best part is that by switching the order of our nights, it made our route make more sense. I hadn’t realized how big the Redwoods are.

I also booked a site a few days earlier in Big Sur. I have memories of camping on the cliffs over Big Sur when we lived there. We would be there over the weekend before July 4th. I was lucky to grab the last “good” spot and booked it right away. It’s hard to know which sites are the best. I stumbled onto CampsitePhotos.com and started using their recommendations. They show photos of each site and have a list of the best sites for each campground in their system. It is awesome.

*Photo by Aron Bosworth / Kirk Creek Campground*

Yosemite, Banff and Yellowstone are the ones I still need to book. Yosemite won’t be available for another few weeks. Banff already is but I’m still trying to get my arms around that area. Yellowstone I will most likely book too. The only non campsite, campsite I’m booking is with Loge Camps on the coast of Oregon. It looks dreamy. And I need to stay there.

As I get further along with planning, I will share what has helped me not lose my sanity!