Cross Country Road Trip Planning

At present, I am planning a cross country road trip to bring my son to college in Montana (from New Hampshire). We're planning to spend some time and sightsee along the way. Planned stops include Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls, the Wall Drugstore, and the Cleveland Zoo, but depending upon our daily mileage, we may have to change plans on the way.

For us this means getting house-sitters since we have two dogs, a cat, and a variable number of chickens. We've arranged for two responsible friends of the family to stay at our house, take care of the animals, and keep everything in order, and of course, the dogs will help make sure everything follows the normal routine. So, that's already taken care of and it's one big worry out of the way.

For the trip itself, my wife, myself, my son, and my mother will take turns driving as needed. We are planning to spend an average of 8-9 hours driving each day and have planned progress points mapped for each day. We had considered bringing tents and camping out along the way, but the thought of just one night of rain and then having to pack up everything wet for the next day's travel made hotels seem like a better option.

Because we are not sure exactly where we'll end up each day, we have not booked hotels in advance for the trip out or the trip back. We did, however, book several nights in a Bozeman hotel because it is a college town that will be filled with new arrivals and parents and we thought rooms might be hard to find during the orientation period for which we'll be visiting. That's done, and it's another worry out of the way.

If my wife had her choice, everything would be planned in advance, each hotel booked, tourist stop planned out, and so forth. I'm more of a travel by the seat of the pants type person. As long as I can plug in the destination on my Garmin and find my way there and home again, everything else will work itself out as we go. It's good, of course, that my wife ensures that we do some pre-planning when we travel, but we always also try to allow plenty of flexibility to react to changing conditions and new opportunities that present themselves along the way.

In this blog, I'll be providing detailed updates of the hotels and restaurants that we find along the way, as well as the tourist destinations that we visit. I'll talk about the drive itself, with road trip tips, and even talk about specific roads, scenery, traffic, and other highlights of the cross country excursion. I'll also try to use the down-time to catch up with some of the other places we've visited over the years, all uploaded via presumably complimentary wireless access at the hotels we choose along the way, or worst case, from the nearest Starbucks.

By the way, we're fond of bird watching and wildlife viewing so expect to learn about some of the best locations for that as well. It's a couple of weeks before our trip begins, so I'll get a number of posts up before then, including one about what I consider to be the best restaurant in New England, bar none.