Introduction

I’m El. My wife, Em, and I have been dreaming of camping our way across the country to see the great beauty that is America since before we were married  44 years ago. More recently, we have vowed to visit as many of the great national parks as we can. Having recently retired from a long career as an engineer, we are now ready to embark on our first cross-country adventure. My plan is to document the trip in this blog. I won’t promise to update daily, but will really try to keep everyone up to date as we go. I hope to cover the planning as well as the trip itself to include some campground and park reviews and photographs of the sites and scenes we find. Our plan is to be on the road for about 8 weeks. A trip of this magnitude takes a little planning. 

Preparations for this trip began over eight months ago. Our 2007 Winnebago Aspect 26A, we felt, was too small for such a long trip, and we hated the corner bed that had limited access and was difficult to make up. So we sold it and purchased another used motor home, a 2012 Thor Daybreak. We closed the deal and took delivery in late September with plans to take it out to a near-by campground before cold weather set in. But something came up and we were unable to do it. So we winterized and started thinking about a long trip in mid-spring. 

In the meantime, some long-standing friends and former neighbors named Ay and Em contacted us about meeting them in Tennessee near Nashville for a weeklong camp out. They are attending a family wedding there; we are meeting up with them to join in the celebration. From there, we are heading west along I-40 to Grand Canyon National Park. Our friends have decided to join us – what can be better than RV’ing the wild west with great friends? 

We will be in Grand Canyon for 7 days. And being that far west from our east coast home, we decided we have to see the big 5 national parks in Utah and take in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument as well. So, our preliminary plan is to head north from the South Rim and camp between the North Rim and Zion NP for a few days, using that as a base for Zion, Bryce, North Rim and the Staircase. We follow that with a night near Capitol Reef NP and a few nights in Moab to take in Arches and Canyonlands. 

Ay and Em will head for home after Capitol Reef, but have invited us to visit with them at their home after we leave Moab. They live in central Colorado near Boulder. 

We are still in the planning phase for Colorado and points east but we already know we are visiting my sister D in Kansas and Em’s brother Em (hmmmm, that’s confusing) in Texas. From there, we’ll head back north to our home in Virginia. 

This is an introduction and teaser. In the next installment, I’ll start to discuss the planning process in more detail, reveal where we will be staying, and the routes we are taking as well as some of the tools we are using to help with the process. 

One more thing. I’m using shortened forms for our names to protect our privacy. Those who know us, know who we are. Our real names don’t really add anything to the story anyway, so I’m using stylized initials.