Before the Trip

For some time we've been thinking about driving the west. What a fascination. The scenery and history are breathtaking. So this blog will start as a journal of the trip and what lead up to it.We started with only two destinations in mind--Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. Sounded simple enough until we got the maps out and started surfing websites. The country is vast, there is so much to see and so little time and money to see it all. We’re not campers and are past doing anything athletic so this will be a sightseeing adventure.

Talking with friends yielded some ideas but we were still largely confused about what we wanted to do. We brought back armloads of tour books from the AAA. Seemed good at first but there was just too much information and sorting it all out was going to be tedious.

Now for some nuts and bolts. We decided to start by selecting several places we wanted to see—we started with Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Graceland (OK, Graceland’s not part of the west but it’s on the way home and we couldn’t resist). We then ordered a TripTik from AAA’s website using those destinations. When the TripTik and maps arrived, we went back to the AAA website. This time, we went through the online Tour Books for each state along the route. For each book, we looked at both Events and Attractions. The resulting lists and links helped us fill in the gaps between the original destinations with stops that interested us.

Well, here we are. The car’s been cleaned and serviced, the mail forwarded to a great bill paying volunteer, a grass mower lined up and a couple of neighbors put on alert. Tomorrow’s the big day.