Roadtrippin’ Baby!
So I did a thing and then didn’t write about it AND didn’t get the photos developed BUT now I have them and it’s about damn time to share!
My best friend graduated college in May of 2021, and for being best friends for life we had never gone on vacation together so we decided to change that with this last chance summer pre real world life.
Cheese!
As two girls who love adventuring outdoors we decided on a National Parks road trip across the country, visiting as many parks as we could and turning around in Missoula, MT to head back to the East Coast. Planning an almost cross country road trip was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. Having the starting point, North Carolina, and the turnaround point, Montana, helped a lot as well as knowing we wanted to visit National Parks because that limited our destinations slightly. However, deciding how far West to go and exactly which Parks to make “on our route” and which ones to leave out and whether we wanted 13 hour driving days took a lot of planning.
The intrepid 2007 Honda Odyssey that took us across the country!
First thing we did was to pull up a map of all National Parks and see which ones were roughly on our path to Montana. After we chose 10 Parks that were a possibility we mapped the driving distance between each destination and put that info into a spreadsheet to see how many days we could spend in each place and how long it would take to drive. Slowly we ruled out impossible days of driving, days where we couldn’t feasibly be in two different places, and parks that were a must see!
Grand Tetons
We chose to turnaround in Missoula Montana because we have friends who live there so it was a perfect excuse to see them and to sneak in a shower and restock on food! We left from North Carolina because that’s where I spent my summer and it gave us a better trajectory to hit more parks than if we left from anywhere in New England. All in all our official route went: Smoky Mountain NP, Gateway Arch NP, Great Sand Dunes NP, Rocky Mountain NP, Yellowstone NP, Missoula, Grand Teton NP, Mammoth Cave NP, Smoky Mountain NP!
Old Faithful; Yellowstone
We used the van as transportation and occasionally as our bed. We brought a Coleman stove and camp kit cooking set, tent and sleeping bags, headlamps, lots of water bottles, backpacks, toilet paper, nonperishable food of course, and our sense of adventure! We bought a National Parks annual pass and used the Recreation.gov app to reserve our campsites ahead of time. Spotify was a must as we drove (sometimes for 13 hours in one day…) but we also watched/narrated the entire Twilight series for entertainment. Neither of us had watched them when they were the shit so we knew at this point they were awful but we just had to see it once in our life - no judgement. You would think narration wasn’t necessary but let me tell you watching these movies in the car there is A LOT of silence so the passenger narrated what was happening to the driver - honestly comedic gold and I can’t recommend it enough.
Our first time in Colorado!
I have a goal in my lifetime to visit all of the National Parks - many people have this goal - but I got to start my journey with my best friend and this is a trip I will never forget and will never stop telling stories of. While we had long driving days and I wish we could have spent weeks in each park we got uninterrupted time together, away from responsibilities and we dedicated our energy to each other for those 2 weeks.
Adventurers, open your atlas but focus on the United States this time - you don’t have to go far or spend lots of money to have a vacation that is priceless. And while you’re at it, bring along your best friend to make a trip unforgettable.