This trip all started when Lindsay let me know she'd be heading to New Orleans for a work conference at the end of June putting me on solo dad detail for about 5 days over the course of weekend. Five days with the kids all to myself? I knew I HAD to make the most of this chance so I check my user or lose work leave and realized I had plenty in the bank to try and do something epic. I have been mentally planning an epic summer cross-country road trip with the family for years. What's the best age window for the kids to enjoy it and remember it? How much tent camping can I get Lindsay to go along with? What are the all the stops and sights I want to be sure we visit? How long? Do I rent a camper/RV? When I realized the window was finally going to happen in the summer of 2022, I had to go back to the drawing board and see what could really be pulled off. Because it was going to just me and the kids, I knew we could camp out a bit more often (even I want a decent hotel room every couple days though), so I ordered a couple quick pop-up/fold up tents, a couple self inflating air mattresses and got down to the picking the stops. In an ideal world, we'd spend a month on the road and see everything including the west coast (California), Seattle, and Glacier NP up in Montana, but that wasn't going to be possible this time as we were only going to be able to make it as far west as Utah/Arizona before we'd have to turn around and head home.

Heading west was the easier decision to just cut across the middle and see the cliché must-do's: St. Louis Arch (with a ride to the top of course!), Devil's Tower (where my love for the parks all started), Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone/Grand Tetons, Bryce Canyon, Zion (do we hike at least part of Angel's landing?) and finally the Grand Canyon followed by the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert.

My first plan heading back east had us swinging through the south to pick up Carl's Bad Caverns and then pretty much straight shot it back through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and work our way up to Tennessee on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Then Lindsay reminded me the Four Corners site that she remembered from her own childhood journey's and that the kiddos would likely get a kick out of it as well. It was too good an idea to pass up and turned out to be a GENIUS idea to make the return trip east all the more epic. After mapping up to the for corners I realized we'd be a stones through from Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and Arches NP which means we'd get the chance to the visit "The BIG 5" in one single trip (assuming we pick up Capitol Reef as we come down from Wyoming)! Now that we'd be going back through Colorado it hit me that we could even pick Rocky Mountain NP which would be another first for me after having to skip it in 2021 when I-70 washed out.

The biggest downside to such an ambitious trip over just two weeks means that we won't spend a lot of time at any specific park which can be needed if you really want to enjoy all there is to see. Yellowstone was the first park I knew we'd never have time to fully discover. As I figured it, if you really want to do Yellowstone "right" you should give yourself at least a week at minimum and that just wasn't going to happen for us. I was excited to get reservations to Madison Campground inside the park, know that we'd at least see Old Faithful, and then take our time driving from the northern end to the southern end seeing what we could see with quick stops some short walks along the way. After a researching the other various stops, I was able to lock down some decent scenic drives through the parks so that the kids will get to 'see' them (and we could always pull off for photos or short walks). They'll have their own lifetimes to come back when they're older to see everything in more depth if they want to.

Now the real planning started to fall in place and I was able to create the itinerary you can see in detail below.

However, in the spirit of any great adventure there had to be a few wrinkles. The first one started getting a place to camp/sleep in Zion. I just HAD to pick one of the most popular weekends to visit Zion which mean that by time I tried to reserve a campsite (about 4 months ahead of arrival date), they were all sold out. Even the South Campground that couldn't be reserved until two weeks out filled up before I could get us a site to pop tents for the evening which pushed us into a Hotel in Springdale for the night. Not the worst thing in the world, but no where near as fun as camping under the stars.

And then about two weeks before we were set to leave, Yellowstone effectively 'closes' due to massive flooding and damage to the roads. The real twist is that they closed our campground (Madison) through June 28th with a plan to reopen it effective June 29th. Our scheduled arrival date at Madison Campground? Yep, you guessed it - June 28th. However, I have learned to trust that everything always works out somehow. I ended up finding us a campsite just outside the Grand Tetons in Colter Bay that will allow us to 'sneak' into Yellowstone from the southern entrance that would still be open instead from the eastern entrance like originally planned. For a planner like me it was a bit discerning to know that I wasn't certain how I'd drive through Wyoming after leaving Devil's Tower on the 28th - we either stay to the north, go through Big Horn National forest, and hopefully still get to enter Yellowstone from the eastern entrance OR cut south through Cody and the Wind River Reservation and swing backup through the southern entrance before camping in Colter Bay. I guess it wouldn't be a worthy adventure without a bit of unknown fun thrown into the mix.