Ready To Go!

The car's all packed and we're taking off in the morning! It's hard to believe it's finally time to go, but we're more than ready. We should be on the road by 7am and plan to stay in Erie, PA tomorrow night. Wednesday we'll stop in Cleveland to check out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and then head toward South Dakota with an overnight stay somewhere along the way. From there? We'll see where the road takes us!

Details and Danny

Today is detail day. Laundry is all caught up so packing will be easy, notified banks & credit cards that we'll be traveling, making sure things are settled here, etc. I had the most bizarre conversation with a credit card customer service rep!

Her: Where will you be travelling?
Me: Cross Country
Her: I need the specific state
Me: We're traveling all around the US. Do you mean I have to list them ALL???
Her: Yes!
Me: (sigh) Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado...
Her: Oh! You mean all the states except Hawaii & Alaska?
DUH!

As for Danny, do we really need to prepare for a hurricane 3 days before we leave? Seriously, Danny...Cape Cod can do without a visit from you just now!

One Week To Go!

We've decided on September first to leave - only a week away! We have a lot to do still, but now that we have a definite date in mind it will all come together quickly. We spent today doing some errands and shopping so that helped get us in motion. Our itinerary is still pretty much as it was in my previous post and we'll fine tune as we go. Should be quite a ride!

Practice Post!

Bear with me while I get some practice posting photos. I'll be using Picasa to manage my photos while we're gone, and hope it will be easy to post them here :)!

This photo was taken during the July 4th weekend. We took Keri, Andrew and the kids out on the boat and happened to catch the Russian tall ship leaving the Mass Maritime Academy. Incredible! Unfortunately, they never put the sails up while we were following along. Now, that would have been beautiful!

Our Itinerary

I give up, for now, on trying to get my Google map into a post! Grrr! I'll figure it out eventually, but for now I'm done! This won't be as pretty as the map, but here's a general outline of our trip...states we're hoping to visit and the main points we'd like to see. We're starting with a speed run to South Dakota. We've been to most of the states between here and there, so SD is where the adventure will begin.  I won't bother listing the states we'll "speed" through, even though they're very nice states!  

• South Dakota -  Badlands National Park, Corn Palace, Mt. Rushmore/Crazy Horse Memorial, Deadwood
  
• Wyoming - Cody, Buffalo Bill Museum, Yellowstone National Park
  
• Montana - Glacier National Park
  
• Washington - (we'll cross a small piece of Idaho first) Seattle, Olympic National Park, Mt. Ranier National Park
  
• Oregon - Portland, Drive down the coast
  
• California - Wander along the coast (Put our toes in the Pacific Ocean!) Pacific Coast Highway, Redwood Nat'l Park, San Francisco, Alcatraz
• Las Vegas, NV
  
• Grand Canyon, AZ
  
• New Mexico - Still researching what to see here
  
• Texas - San Antonio (Alamo, Riverwalk, etc)
  

From this point we're not quite sure how things will play out. I'm going to list what we'd like to see, but we'll wait until we get closer to see what happens.  

• New Orleans?  We've been there before, but we may head there after Texas
  
• Nashville, TN (and Memphis) 
  
• Atlanta, GA (to see Jen & Mike!) play tourist (Coke, Aquarium, etc), maybe Savannah  (If we to to New Orleans we'll probably go to Atlanta first, then Nashville)
• Head north up the Atlantic coast  through SC, NC, VA
  
• Stafford, VA to see Jay & Ija & maybe see some of DC
  
• Back home to Cape Cod, MA!!!
  

Will we hit all the places on this list?  Maybe, maybe not.  Will we find other, interesting spots along the way?  Hope so!

Getting Ready!

We're almost there!  We plan to leave around September 1, so it won't be long until we're on the road.  We have our general route planned, along with a list of the places we'd like to visit.  I'll post our itinerary soon, and if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong there will eventually be a map to go with it.  Since I'm a new to blogging, and still riding the learning curve, I haven't been able to get the map to show up correctly in a post.  It will happen eventually!  

We bought the new laptop that will help us plan along the way and allow us keep in touch while we're gone.  Still setting things up on it, but it's just about ready to go.  We're also the proud new owners of a Fast Lane transponder, picked up a new road atlas in large print so we can actually read it, and we already have a GPS.  We've waded through the paperwork and budget planning for being newly retired, so that's all in place.  I think we're set on most of the details!  

I've been doing a lot of reading and researching online to make our list of what to see.  There's so much out there!  There are some great sites that have been a huge help.  Road Trip America, America's Byways, the National Parks site, AAA, to name a few, not to mention the individual state travel sites.  The most exciting information I've found, though, is on all the trip journals and blogs from other road trippers.  

Now we just have to pack our bags and decide on a definite departure date. Can't wait!