Our Route

Since I didn't want to take the time to figure out how to import a map, I just took a photo of the hand-drawn map I did a couple of nights ago.

As you can see, we have planned our route so we can go to several of the National Parks including Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Badlands, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and The Rocky Mountains N.P.

We are also stopping in San Francisco and Las Vegas for a couple of days each. Plus, we found a very nice State of Oregon campground right on the beach just north of Newport, OR. We are staying there for 6 days.

We are also sticking mainly to the highways. I know we could see a lot more scenery if we took back roads, but we are traveling such a long distance, that Missy and I agreed that minimizing the time the kids were in the car each day was important. So we broke the trip up so that most days were are driving less than 300 miles. And almost all of the campgrounds we are staying at have playgrounds and pools.

Camping for 2-months with 3 kids? Are you Crazy!?!?!

Several people have asked Missy about the wisdom of all of us spending 2-months together in a 21’ trailer. I think that, by and large, those people have a skewed picture in their head about RV’s and our kid’s attitudes towards camping.

First off….yes…our camper has a bathroom. It is small and only one person can be in there at a time, but it is a regular bathroom. There is a sink, shower and a toilet. There is even a fan if you are concerned about “noise” being overheard by the people on the other side of the door. Our camper also has an oven, microwave, refrigerator, Television w/ DVD player, Radio w/ CD player and 3 comfortable beds. The boy has his own single bunk and the girls share the double bed in the back of the camper. Missy and I have a queen bed in the front of the camper. So, while it is small, you can hardly call spending time in our camper…”roughing it”.

As for camping for 2 months with our kids…that is the part of this trip that I am the least concerned about. All of them have been camping since they were babies. The boy’s first camping trip was 6-weeks after he was born. We figured if he was going to be up all night, we could deal with that just as easily in the camper as we can at home. So our kids have all grown up camping. They are perfectly happy to find a pile of dirt in our campsite and dig and make up games to play. The girls will get out their plastic dolls and make up some elaborate game about a castle of princesses that have to find their way through a magical forest. The boy will pretend his toy cars are on a track and are smashing into each other. We have never had to “entertain” them while camping. That is not say that they don’t occasionally get worn-out, and ask to go in the camper and watch a movie on the TV; but that is the exception - not the rule.

What is up with the price of Gas!!!!

$2.65??? Are you kidding me? It was $1.86 just 3 weeks ago.

Okay...doing the math here. Going 8000 miles towing our camper and getting 10 miles per gallon of gas means we will burn about 800 gallons of gas during our 52-day trip. So an increase of $.79 per gallon means we will pay an extra $632.00 for gas. Holy CRAP! I sure hope the price goes back down as fast as it came up.

Where are we going?!?!

Our 52 day trip will take us into 14 states and we will camp in a total of 19 different campgrounds. Here is a list of the states we will go through in order from departure to arrival back home.
Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Iowa
South Dakota
Wyoming
Montana
Idaho
Oregon
California
Arizona
New Mexico
Colorado
Kansas
Missouri
Illinois (again)
Indiana (again)
Back home to Ohio
Should be around 8000 miles before we are done!

First Post - Getting ready to leave

Hello and welcome to our Blog. The purpose of this blog is to chronicle our upcoming 52-day camping trip from Ohio to the coast of Oregon and California over the summer of 2009. While most of this content will be about this trip, we might occasionally toss in a random thought or two.

We are scheduled to leave in 10 days. Man there is a lot to do! I didn’t realize when we were planning this trip back in January that there would be so many details to tie up before leaving for 2-months. Everything from figuring out how to pay our bills while we are away to getting the kids medication force filled by the pharmacy so we don’t have to worry about finding a place “on the road” that can do it. It has been a lot of work and it isn't done yet!