USA! USA! USA!

So here’s what we’re doing. We fly to Vancouver, buy a caravan and a truck to tow it with, and then start driving. We go down the west coast of the USA, along the bottom, up the east coast, along the top, and finish with a cruise to Alaska. We’ll be driving for 6 months and close to 20,000 miles, and we’ll take in 39 states, over 50 national and state parks, at least one Major League ballpark, and approximately 300 playgrounds as directed by a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old. There’s a handy infographic below that shows the route we’re taking.

Why, you may ask? Which is a perfectly reasonable question, as sane and normal people tend not to try and spend extended periods of time in a small enclosed space with two small children. We’ve always thought a roadie like this would be a great adventure, and this was our window, with child number one starting school next year, and child number two old enough to get vaccinated and get adventuring. When we got married, the reading at our wedding was from Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road”. We both share a little of his yearning for the freedom of travel, forgoing the “old smooth prizes” for “rough new prizes”. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be great, and exciting, and unexpected.

North America has always been a special place for both of us – we’ve both lived there, and enjoyed a few other work trips and holidays. It’s a great place for this kind of adventure: vast and diverse, with great and varied scenery, food, and culture; but also easier and safer than other destinations. Prior to the trip, we’d visited 32 states together, and our original idea was to try and explore the remaining 18, mainly on the upper east coast, the Midwest and the north. This bloomed into trying to tackle all 50, and then common sense made a brief appearance and we trimmed back down to a more manageable loop, taking in our 18 plus a chance to revisit the west coast and south, plus some intensive national park action in the southwest. The longest visa you can get is 6 months, so we’re maxing it out.

Is it going to be hard work? Undoubtedly. Going to Pak N Save with 2 kids is a challenge, so this trip will certainly have its moments. There will be a lot of driving for the kids to adjust to, and a very different daily routine to what they’re used to, in good ways and bad. I can’t wait to see the girls see a bison or a bear, and countless waterfalls, mountains, and canyons; I know there will also be a good amount of backtracking to find the favourite toy we left behind in a truck stop, and a bit of rinsing baby spew from car seat covers in communal campground sinks. It will be by a very long distance the longest continuous time we have spent together as a couple, and even more so for the kids and I: I’m really looking forward to both of these things, although whether the girls feel the same way after 6 months may be a different matter! I’m a relative novice with a hired trailer from Bunnings, so learning to tow 6,000lbs with a giant ute is going to be a steep learning curve. And a huge part of the appeal of the trip is a chance to step out of pace of modern life, of meetings and deadlines, and emails and social media, and thinking about work and news and work every minute; but this itself will be a big mental adjustment. I can’t get off my phone, but I must get off my phone.

I’m also looking forward to writing about it, as much for my own enjoyment as for the expectation that anyone will want to read it. I used to love writing, and haven’t done much of it in earnest for many years, and I hope there’s some muscle memory still there. I don’t know exactly what I’ll write about, but probably bison and baby spew and canyons and BBQ. I don’t think it will be one of those earnestly useful blogs about gas mileage and travel hacks, and we’re definitely not angling to become social bloody media bloody influencers. But if you would like to follow our adventure, and you don’t mind equal portions of mesas, ribs, and nappies, then I hope you enjoy the words and photos. There may be some slightly nerdy attempt at tallying our parks, beers, and “where’s New Zealand”s, and Momo’s Playground Reviews could become a popular recurring feature.

PS Given that our audience is likely to be fairly small (hi Mum!), this is almost certainly overly cautious, but the interweb is a funny place so we’re going to use nicknames rather than real ones. As your humble narrator I get dibs on “I”, and my co-stars will be Bo, Mo, and Kitty. You’ll get used to it.

PPS The blog name was hard to crack. Honourable mentions to Have Love, Will Travel Trailer, which combined the chance to make you both click here and learn the silly American name for caravan, and RV Keitel.

Handy Infographic