We are planning an awesome, US-wide road trip, beginning and ending in good old South Dakota, focusing on National Parks, Monuments, Forests, Scenic Drives, and Good Food (of course we will hit some tourist-y stuff too). I'll highlight some of our most anticipated stops:
We will be starting off heading East, hitting Acadia National Park in Maine, heading back down through Boston, DC, (bypassing NYC- I just can't plan a 1 or 2 day trip there and keep my sanity), drive all along the Blue Ridge Parkway (Beautiful- look it up!), stop in New Orleans, Austin, and then...
Colorado- Telluride, specifically, and Utah (Arches National Park as well as Zion National Park)! This is one stretch that I, personally, am completely excited for. We already booked 2 nights at the campground at Zion NP, which was so exciting to do!
Then we will head down to Phoenix to see family(!), and over to Los Angeles, to drive most of the west cost on highway 1 (right along the coast). We will hopefully spend the night at Big Sur, which I hear is absolutely beautiful, and make a trip inland to spend time at Yosemite National Park (FYI- it will not be long before I abbreviate National Park as NP every time :).
We'll dive over the Golden Gate bridge, and continue North to the Redwood National Park, Portland, and Seattle (where we will be spending about 3/4 days, taking a trip to the North Cascades National Park), then slightly south, to spend time at Yellowstone (still trying to figure out what to do and see among the enormous area), back through the Black Hills, and home again.
I started off making that a short version, and somehow ended up with a longer version than what I hoped for, but I just get so excited, especially about the southwest and west US stops!!
If you have any more suggestions of places to visit, things to do, places to eat, or long-term driving/camping tips, we'd love to hear them!
Once I get more into blogging, Ill figure out how to post the map. We have the entire trip mapped out on myscenicdrives.com, which has turned out to be such an amazing resource, like mapquest, only better!
On a side note, we went to, and loved Schmeckfest, which we attended this last weekend in Freeman, SD. It was a great celebration of German/Russian food. We got to see sausage being made (and still really wanted some- and had it!), along with other popular german foods. The people in this picture were working on cheese pockets (which by the way- were delicious). The little old lady had her technique down, and was whipping those puppies out like nobody's business. (and isn't her hat just awesome?!)
