45 days and 45 nights, updated :)

I can’t wait!

6 week vacation planning is exhaustive.
Also doing a lot of maintenance and repairs to the RV, which seems monumental at times, even for the smallest tasks (like wiring in a new led porch light!)
 
We did Zion and the north rim of the GC several years ago and it rocked. I don't know how much you weigh but they just looked at me, shook their heads, and said the limit is 200 pounds sir! We still hoofed it down under our own steam but not all the way to the bottom. A few days later, we stopped at Clayton lake dinosaur tracks right after a short rain and the rain helped to magnify the tracks. You could see where the caveman was running. :eek: That's on the corner of N.M. and O.K. If you find yourself close enough to Amarillo, The Big Texan is actually a fantastic steak house/souvenir/museum place. Man, this is making me want a road trip real bad!
 
thebrotherinlaw said:
We did Zion and the north rim of the GC several years ago and it rocked. I don't know how much you weigh but they just looked at me, shook their heads, and said the limit is 200 pounds sir! We still hoofed it down under our own steam but not all the way to the bottom. A few days later, we stopped at Clayton lake dinosaur tracks right after a short rain and the rain helped to magnify the tracks. You could see where the caveman was running. :eek: That's on the corner of N.M. and O.K. If you find yourself close enough to Amarillo, The Big Texan is actually a fantastic steak house/souvenir/museum place. Man, this is making me want a road trip real bad!
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200 pound limit for what?

I hadn’t weighed anywhere close to 200lbs since 1998. :lol:
 
My bad, the mules! Those Grand Canyon mules must be a little soft so 200lbs is their carrying capacity. As we were walking down into the canyon, a group of lighter tourist were coming back out. A little guy about 9 had the reigns of his mule pulled as tight as he could get them and tied off to the saddle horn. That poor mule had it's tongue hung out about a foot just trying to breath!
 
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X3 big Texan!
 
Hoover Dam is a couple hours. Been there, done that, don’t need to go back. Since you’re going to be running thru AZ, have you thought about stopping at Tombstone?
 
Hoover Dam was on the list but got axed because it’s going to just take too much time out of an already busy schedule. Need to save some things for the next trip. :)

hadn’t thought about Tombstone or the big texan. Might want to give it a go and see if I could do it.
 
You could spend a solid week in southern AZ. Tombstone is cool, the PIMA Air and Space Museum, the Titan Missile Museum, hiking in the Saguaros, the Desert Museum, etc.
 
I'm jealous. I wish my wife and I could both get six weeks in a row off work, and ride around the country.
 
rockcity said:
I’m quickly realizing 6 weeks is not enough time for everything we want to do...

:(
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Every time I look at a map and think about all the spots I'd want to hit on an "out west" adventure, it seems impossible outside of a ~3 month trip. If I ever got laid off with severance for a few months, overlapping the kids' summer break, AND we had enough saved up to do it already, that's about the only way I figure we could do it all in one go. Outside of waiting til "retirement".
 
Ok. Quick update...

Coronacrap has tossed me a curve ball, that’s for sure. Staying with our original planned leave date of June 15 but making a few changes.

we are NOT going to Chicago. That place is a clusterfuck of virus and no way in hell I want to be in a big ass city like that if I don’t have to. My parents and niece and nephew were going to meet us in Chicago and spend a few days together up there, but we all cancelled that. And, I haven’t heard anything about MLB starting the season up and I highly doubt that if it’s before June 19ths game we were supposed to go to, that they would even let fans in the stadium. So that’s out too.

But, we’ve decided on an extra day at Mammoth Cave, and are going to do a night at some haunted BnB in Indiana, so that’ll be... interesting. :D

Most National Parks are opening up. Thankfully all of our RV campgrounds were not in the parks, so we didn’t get cancelled like everyone else. For Yellowstone we were staying in West Yellowstone, which is in Montana, which also still has a 14 day quarantine for people coming from out of state, which means west and north entrances are closed. We had to make alternate reservations in Cody, WY so we can visit via the east entrance.

the Grand Canyon is also slow to reopen. North Rim is closed indefinitely and rumor has it that it won’t open till 2021. So we are having to make alternate plans as we had planned to do the north rim. South rim is opening very slowly and several of the Indian reservations there are still completely closed to outsiders; much of the Canyon and activities are managed through and by the reservation. So, we are going to have to plan that leg of the trip on the fly as things open up.


For our trip, I used it as an excuse to get a JLUR so we can flat town it behind the RV. :D Of course, I had to put a winch on the Jeep; that was an ordeal as I chose to find a way to fit my 9.5ti on the factory bumper for which nobody makes a plate for. And it was also an ordeal finding a way to flat tow without having a base plate bracket hanging down 6” below the bumper. Fabricated some custom brackets to fit the Blue Ox tow bar and some shackle mounts from Frog Fab that extend through the crush can covers on the factory bumper. Looks clean even though it was a crap ton of work and thinking.

Aside from the Jeep, the RV has undergone some updates. All LED lights because the original ones were terrible! New washer/dryer, new AC, all fluids And filters changed (holy crap, there are 10 filters!). New back up camera since the old one was black and white on a 6” CRT TV :lol: All new caulk on the roof. New sway bar and greasing all grease fittings (I lost count at 83 zerk fittings!). Picked up a TPMS system for the RV and Jeep to keep an eye on the tires. Getting lift pump changed out on the ISC and some other misc maintenance items.

It was time for the kids to get into some real bikes, so we had to bite the bullet and pick a few bikes up from REI as well as a bike rack for the Jeep. It was a real struggle because every bike shop is practically sold out of decent bikes and racks! We are taking the kayaks and SUPs with us and will have them mounted in the Jeep. SMS Exposed Racks was the ticket. They are all made in the USA and can support up to 300lbs via the gutter rails on the JLUR. They even have a rack that mounts under the soft top so you can still use your gear if you run a soft top. And, they are about the same price as Yakima or Thule racks.

Progress progress. It’s crunch time.

We have several things planned for each of the areas.

mammoth cave
loiusville state park
Rush Adventure Park in SD
Wind cave, Badlands, Rushmore, Devils Tower
Horseback riding in Yellowstone
J Bar Chuckwagon in Jackson (Happy 10th birthday to Caroline and Olivia!)
July 4th in Moab
canyoneering and primitive camping in Zion
Mt biking on outskirts of Bryce (bikes not allowed on trails in Bryce)
Hiking in Bryce
Couple days at Sand Hollow
Kayaking and paddle boarding (And trout fishing) the Colorado River below Lake Powell
Whatever we can plan for Grand Canyon
Petrified Forest NM
Carlsbad Caverns to watch the bats
Roswell (we are all intrigued by UFOs)
Something in TX
Hot Springs
Gem mining in Alabama
Heading home after that.

that’s a long list of things to do in 6 weeks and it will be packed full of activities.

I figured an RV road trip would be reasonably affordable. Boy was I very wrong! :lol:

stay tuned as I’ll try and post more updates as we get closer and certainly will post updates and pics during the trip.
 
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Sounds like an extreme headache and extrememly fun at the same time.
Your plans look like using the boats a limited amount. Could you rent out that way for your excursions? Or you actually plopping down and using them daily for a bit?

We own our on boats and bikes. I've contemplated what your doing on a much less grand scale. My son went out with GF family for three weeks to use boats once. Everyone decided dragging them around securing them for the extended trip wasn't worth it.
 
My dads Alaska trip got cancelled and he is doing a similar trip (going to a few of the same spots you are) leaving June 12th and going to Texas then to New Mexico, Colorado, arizona and maybe Utah. He won’t be back until sometime in august though
 
We considered renting boats. But we do plan to use them other times along the way. We are actually using our own boats for the kayak and SUP trip on the Colorado River as well as the upper portion of the Yellowstone and out at Sand Hollow. Between those 3 places, rental costs for the 4 of us would amount to purchasing the roof racks. So, aside from any unforeseen issues transporting the boats on the rack, it’s a wash $ wise. Plus we would own the racks now and we would have our own boats for any time we wanted to use them. And, we know and are comfortable with our own boats. We’ll see how it goes. :)
 
rockcity said:
We considered renting boats. But we do plan to use them other times along the way. We are actually using our own boats for the kayak and SUP trip on the Colorado River as well as the upper portion of the Yellowstone and out at Sand Hollow. Between those 3 places, rental costs for the 4 of us would amount to purchasing the roof racks. So, aside from any unforeseen issues transporting the boats on the rack, it’s a wash $ wise. Plus we would own the racks now and we would have our own boats for any time we wanted to use them. And, we know and are comfortable with our own boats. We’ll see how it goes. :)
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That's the way I'd figure it too. Good to see multiple uses, you need an adopted son or portage helper for said trip. Excursion butler to aid in the fun?
 
Dylan W. said:
Sounds like it's going to be a great adventure.
The needed planning would drive me crazy.
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It’s freaking crazy how much it takes to plan this, especially with all the changes the coronacrap has caused. I’d say I have at least 40 hours of true, focused planning, reading, changing itinerary, making lists, marking things off the list, ordering all kinds of stuff, etc. That doesn’t count the constant upgrades and modifications to the RV and Jeep to get them travel and tow ready. Ugh. It could easily be a full time job.
 
Me and the wife did a 30 day cross country trip a few years ago and didn’t really plan anything except the places we wanted to see. Best vacation EVER, didn’t feel rushed, we would drive towards the things we wanted to see and do then I would book a Hilton in the area using my points and if we wanted to stay a day or two more we would just stay. There are things we missed due to no planning but there’s always next time for that. At the time I had just finished 2 very large Government projects and was totally burned out on planning and organizing anything.
 
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obullfish said:
Me and the wife did a 30 day cross country trip a few years ago and really plan anything except the places we wanted to see. Best vacation EVER, didn’t feel rushed, we would drive towards the things we wanted to see and do then I would book a Hilton in the area using my points and if we wanted to stay a day or two more we would just stay. There are things we missed due to no planning but there’s always next time for that. At the time I had just finished 2 very large Government projects and was totally burned out on planning and organizing anything.
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I’m burned out on planning everything too, but driving a 40’ RV out there, a certain amount of planning is required, especially during peak season or I’d be stuck without a place to stay besides a wal mart parking lot. There are a lot of first come first serve campgrounds, but I just can’t stand the idea of going that far taking that kind of risk. So, I had to at least plan the RV parks and 1 privately guided trip per park. The rest of the time is freelance time for us to do whatever we want. Or nothing. That’s the best part. :)
 
rockcity said:
I’m burned out on planning everything too, but driving a 40’ RV out there, a certain amount of planning is required, especially during peak season or I’d be stuck without a place to stay besides a wal mart parking lot. There are a lot of first come first serve campgrounds, but I just can’t stand the idea of going that far taking that kind of risk. So, I had to at least plan the RV parks and 1 privately guided trip per park. The rest of the time is freelance time for us to do whatever we want. Or nothing. That’s the best part. :)
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Yeah I wasn’t in a 40’ MH so I get the point of planning for that.
 
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