Entry one: The Big Trip: planning to plan

25 Jun 2022

A year ago today my wife, son, and I headed out on a month-long road trip.

If you’re of “reading age”, you know what’s been happening for the last few years now and you know what it was like to emerge from Covid isolation, freshly vaccinated, in spring of 2021. Let that frame this whole tale for you as I add more context.

We are teachers, my wife and I, and in fall 2020, our jobs were entirely online. Our son had another year before he would head to kindergarten. And we found ourselves spending a considerable amount of time together. I would like to go on record and say that we faired pretty well in this situation, or at least, about as well as folks could. In that same fall time frame, rumblings of successful covid vaccine trials were getting louder and the prospect of getting out and doing something seemed possible if not probable.

Pre-covid, I had the thought: what would it be like to drive from Oregon to the mid-west (family in Michigan) on a route through southern Canada? I spent some quality time with maps (I am always spending quality time with maps- I love maps) and sketched out a couple of potential routes that would take probably an entire summer to traverse. At that point, Henry was four and the logistics were challenging enough to make this a “someday trip”.

When by late fall 2020 Covid was looking like it might be a surmountable thing, the defense mechanisms in my brain started allowing the Big Trip Idea to creep back in. Canada was out, since borders were closed for the foreseeable future. Much, I’m sure, to the chagrin of HR departments the world-over, we work-from-homers had some occasional free time during the work day (“work” day / work “day” / “work day”)¹ and I started using some of that time to peruse Google Maps to see if inspiration would strike.

It did, as it always does when I start looking at maps (I did mention that I love maps), and gradually a plan started to take shape. US Highway 2 runs across the northern states and through some notable points of interest, Glacier National Park chief among them. I am usually averse to backtracking, so for the return leg I looked at Interstate 90 headed west and even though I don’t love the idea of camping near interstates, I-90 would get us near Mount Rushmore and would provide a relatively efficient means of getting home without doubling up on scenery too much.

Logistically, things were looking decent. The truck and camper were looking like they could be ready in time², state parks and other public institutions were opening or projected to be open, and gas was still (relatively) inexpensive. I figured we’d need around 10 travel days in each direction. 10 days was long enough that we would avoid 12 hour driving slogs and short enough that we wouldn’t cut short our family visiting time.

Katey and I had talked about hypothetical Big Trip Ideas in the past and she knew that I was working on another one. With something of a draft worked up, we had a bit of a family meeting: would this be something we would commit to? The truck would need to be ready, reservations would need to be made, family in Michigan would have to be available, someone would have to watch our place in Oregon, and maybe most importantly, we’d need to apportion the necessary finances. It was a quick meeting: all parties were on board with this plan. (And if you’re thinking: this guy must be a lot of fun to live with, having business meetings with his family all the time, you are right. It is fun.)

The next step was choosing a departure date, and begin to plan out stops, which I’ll detail more in the next entry.

Before you move on, I know there are folks that might raise an eyebrow at my process: One of the major plusses of a truck camper (versus a camp trailer) is the ease of boondocking (that is, camping without hookups in a place that may or may not be a campsite). Likewise, you can take typically take a camper into far less hospitable terrain than you can a trailer. I think a lot of folks in my position would have created a few waypoints on a the map, set a fairly loose schedule, and just winged it with regard to how far on the road they’d get each day. Time to stop for the night? Great, just pick a spot on or off road, make dinner, go to bed.

But there were some factors in-play on our trip that made that less than desirable. Foremost was the fact that Henry was five and his longest roadtrip to that point had only been a few days (and he wasn’t exactly in a constant state of delight). Katey and I are of the opinion that family trips are a time to be enjoying each other and the surroundings and not staring at the iPad. I was eager to make this a structured trip that had a defined beginning and ending each day and not get into “we’ll stop in a while” territory. Also, from a sort of selfish standpoint, I knew that it wouldn’t be a stress-free drive and I liked the idea of not being on the hook for finding a place to stop every night that would be safe and pleasant.

Finally, we had sights that we wanted to see and with one day per stop, we needed to be sure that we “hit the marks” so that we’d have time to enjoy the recreational opportunities in those places. For example: we needed to stay in west Glacier in order to have time to do something in west Glacier. And in order to stay in west Glacier, we had to have a reservation for somewhere in west Glacier. Places like that are notoriously difficult to roll up to and just find a pleasant place to stay. Not for me, at least- I don’t have that kind of luck and as mentioned above, I wasn’t interested in capping off a day of driving by roaming around for an hour, looking for a place to bed-down. Just me and the missus with no set destination? Sure. The three of us with a group waiting for us on a specific date? Let’s not leave it to chance.