Honeymoon Road Trip - The Plan

As I said in my previous post we had decided on a cross-country honeymoon trip complete with hiking, camping, and sightseeing in the Great Outdoors. While my then-fiance planned the wedding, I was in charge of researching and planning the honeymoon.



We had 10 days to complete this trip with a few constraints. First, we had a "companion" ticket from Delta we decided to use for half of the round trip. We would only be driving one-way which us to plan more sightseeing. Second, our original route would highlight the Grand Canyon, thinking that since we were getting married in March, the weather would be nice and crisp. However, due to work schedules, we had to postpone our honeymoon until July, which made a southerly route through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona much less attractive. We live in Florida, but we're more of a cold-weather couple, so driving across the desert in 110-degree heat was a big deterrent. So we decided on Seattle, WA as our western turnaround point to take advantage of the cooler temperatures on a northen route.




That was the easy part of the planning process. When planning a long roadtrip, having a destination where you can relax after days of roughing-it is a great starting point. But the real fun comes from filling up the days along the way with interesting sites and activities.

AAA guidebooks are a good place to start brainstorming. (On a side note, I wholeheartedly believe every person over 16 should have a AAA card. Not only does it provide a measure of safety when traveling, but you also get free maps, free guidebooks, and travel discounts at 1000s of places.)



Another excellent resource is the US National Parks Service website and this is where we started making our list of sites to see. We absolutely had to backpack in Yellowstone, and since we were going to be in Seattle, we wanted to see Mt St Helens. So we did a couple triptiks on the AAA website and looked for national parks and interesting sites near the recommended routes.

We ended up with a aggressive but doable travel plan that allowed us to see the most sites feasible in the short time we had available.

Day 1 - Central FL to Hickory, NC to drop off the girls at grandma's house.
Day 2 - Hickory, NC to St Louis, MO - See the Arch
Day 3 - St. Louis to Sioux Falls, SD - First day of camping
Day 4 - Sioux Falls, SD to Rapid City, SD - See Mount Rushmore
Day 5 - Rapid City, SD to Yellowstone NP, WY - Camp at a standard campsite
Day 6 - Yellowstone NP - One day of backcountry camping
Day 7 - Yellowstone NP, WY to Spokane, WA - Standard campsite, rest
Day 8 - Spokane, WA to Mt St Helens - Climb a volcano
Day 9 - Mt St Helens to Seattle, WA - Rest up for the flight back
Day 10 - Fly Home

Like I said, aggressive, but I love to drive and with just the two of us, we're very efficient travelers. I would not recommend such a tight schedule with children, but for us, the schedule was part of the adventure.