If I thought my first trip took a long time to plan…this one has taken even longer! Who knew that could even be possible!?! After more than a year of researching and several massive trip plan overhauls, I know where I want to take pictures and when…the necessary reservations have been made, Walmarts located, tide charts printed, and all that remains is to give the interior of my beloved 4Runner a good cleaning and sew some new curtains for it.
I’ve benefited greatly from having planned and taken my 2006 road trip, and have been able to put my experiences to use in getting ready for this new adventure. Whereas last time I wound up traveling 32,000 miles over 101 days on the road, this time I’ll “only” be covering roughly 24,000 miles over the course of 120 days. I’ll also come home to Salt Lake twice this time (only one “pitstop” last time). Besides slowing the pace down a bit, the biggest change this time around is that to help keep my mileage down, I’ll be doing several short solo backpacking trips in some of the national parks. I’ve got overnight trips planned in Olympic, Mount Rainier, and Guadalupe National Parks, as well as a 27-mile trip set for Isle Royale (off the coast of Minnesota/Canada), and a six-day, 42-mile-long trip along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
The first leg through the Pacific Northwest and Glacier/Yellowstone National Parks is the shortest at less than a month, and also includes spending a couple days in Sandpoint, ID for our annual Family Campout. I missed the event last year and it’s always a good time, so I figured it was worth planning the first leg around attending that. I haven’t been to the Oregon coast in over a year (after four trips out there in the span of a twelve-months) so I’m quite excited about heading back that way, as well as getting to spend a couple days shooting waterfalls and coastal sunsets on the Olympic Peninsula. After the big campout I’ll backtrack to Mount Rainier, one of my favorite places to hike and take pictures when I lived in Seattle.
Besides backpacking in the Great Lakes, highlights from the second leg of the trip include Michigan lighthouses, waterfalls in Vermont and New Hampshire, several days for coastal Maine, and several historic church/mansion ruins in South Carolina and Georgia. I’ll also get to visit two of the most photogenic cemeteries around, Natchez City Cemetery in Mississippi, and Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, SC. In addition, I’ve also timed things so that I’ll be in Albuquerque in time to catch the Balloon Fiesta in October before spending a couple days exploring the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness and Ah-shi-sle-pah Wash, the New Mexico equivalent of the Badlands.
My 2006 trip somehow overlooked half of the California coast and the week I spent out that way this past January has lead me to believe that I need to spend much, much more time there this time around, hence giving myself more than a month to cover California and Arizona, with a couple days for Oregon and Nevada thrown in for good measure. I’ll finally get to see Mono Lake before heading for Lake Tahoe and then Pyramid Lake, and then cut towards southwestern Oregon by way of Lassen National Park and Shasta Valley. From there I’ll spend two weeks following the coastline down through the Los Angeles area. Fingers crossed that I get some good clouds, and not just rained on!
And there you have it, Tiff’s Big Ass Road Trip Part Deux…although I’ve had to rename my adventure some, a few too many people were offended by my use of the word “Ass”….I’ll have to think on what I want to call the next coffee table book, but I’ve got a little while, and a few thousand miles, to contemplate that!
One more month and I’ll be off…!!!
Oh, and one more thing…if any of my bands want to help me get my music fix while I’m home briefly in August and October, please book shows for the weekends of August 14th and October 16th!!! 