The One Way Road Trip

In the fall of 2014 we set off for our most adventurous road trip yet: 14 days, 4,500 miles, 11 states, and 7 national parks.

This was a one-way trip. After living 7 years in Portland, Oregon, it was time to move back to The Mitten. We had many, many adventures in the Pacific Northwest (many of which you’ll find here), but we longed for the snow, lakes the size of inland seas and “good mornings” to strangers on the street. Part 1 of the trip involved a horrendous 3-day slog along I-80 corridor with all of our belongings in a Penske truck. I won’t go into the details of this leg except to say that the truck has a governor set at 65, the bench seat does not recline, and the driver’s seatbelt was overzealous.

By the time we arrived in Kalamazoo, Lola was like a drunken pirate after many months at sea. We hopped a plane back to PDX, had a quick house cooling party to say good-bye to our friends, and took off in the Astro Van pulling the Burro! to the great American Southwest.

Due to the speed of our move across the country, we had no time to plan for this trip. We had 3 months to find a rental in Kalamazoo, rent our side of the duplex, finish renovating the duplex (paint was literally drying when we closed the door for the last time), wrap up work at our current employer and prepare for the new one. Needless-to-say, there wasn’t a lot of time left over to plan in excruciating detail the itinerary of this adventure, like I prefer to do. We left with a time frame, loose route and the big attractions.

I can understand how you type-A, control-freaks like me might be hyperventilating right now and boy was I nauseous heading down US-26 towards the Painted Hills not knowing a single place of where we would sleep, where we’d get food or gas but I learned something very powerful on this trip: it is better NOT to plan everything! The spontaneity increased the joy of this adventure ten-fold. We literally took each day at a time: what we wanted to do and approximately where we wanted to get to. Halfway through the trip, we realized how close Bryce was to Zion and Arches were to Canyonlands so we doubled the beauty we saw in Utah. The Grand Canyon also wasn’t on the original attraction list but how could we not pop over and just look over the edge?! This worked largely because Brandon has a love of maps and I’m obsessed with guidebooks, so we’d spend evenings in the Burro mapping out the next day to be continued planning on the road.

My only regret was we couldn’t have made the trip longer but alas, we’re not independently wealthy (yet) and needed to get back to making those pennies full-time.

If you’re interested in the details, each park has its own link below as each deserves a special moment to appreciate the magic and beauty we found there: