So this is the end of the road trip series! We left Joshua Tree, our last stop, and headed back to San Diego!
We then spent the next few days seeing some of the sights and enjoying the features of civilization again! We went to the beach, ate nice food (burgers and Hodads, margaritas at Cantina Mayahuel, etc), went to Balboa park, and visited some breweries.
In the first overview post, I posted our rough itinerary. I’ll link the whole series here so it’s easier to find all the posts and recap where we went.
- Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam
- Zion National Park
- Day Trip to the Grand Canyon
- Bryce Canyon and Kodachrome State Park
- Grand Escalante and Petrified Forest
- Capitol Reef and Goblin Valley
- Natural Bridges, Glen Canyon, and Monument Valley
- Canyonlands
- Arches National Park and Dead Horse Point SP
- Grand Teton Day 1
- Yellowstone
- Grand Teton Day 2
- Seattle
- Portland and Multnomah Falls
- Crater Lake
- Pacific Coast Highway, Redwoods, and Eureka
- San Francisco
- Yosemite and Sequoia
- Joshua Tree and Ghost Towns
Some stats:
We drove 6,205.6 miles, according the the odometer, which I didn’t reset the whole trip.
We went to 13 National Parks. We had a National Parks pass (which costs $80), so we got into all of those National Parks, plus two National Monuments and two National Recreation Areas for the cost of that pass. If we hadn’t had that pass, we would have paid $480 for all of those entrance tickets. Definitely worth the price of the pass!
We spent time in 9 states (and spent the night in 6 of them). It was my first time in 7 of the states (Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Oregon).
Wrap-Up
Today is the anniversary of the day we got back from this trip, so it’s appropriate that I’m finally finishing this series. This trip was so great. I got to see so many places that I had always wanted to see. I got to spend so much time with James and other friends. I got healthy dose of nature, which is always appreciated.
Now that I’ve had a year to reflect, I can also appreciate that it was so nice to have taken such a big trip right before starting grad school, and unknowingly before the pandemic hit. I am so grateful that we had that opportunity to see so many amazing things and make so many amazing memories before this really tough time. It’s been nice to look back on this trip over the past six months as a way of escaping my current situation.
One of the main takeaways I have from this trip was that we have to do it again. We have a long, long list of places we’d like to add to the next road trip itinerary, many of which we saw when researching the last road trip. We also learned a lot about planning and preparing for a long road trip.
Another result of this trip was getting excited about living in the US again. After finishing my undergrad in Scotland, which included living in China, and having gone to over 21 countries over the course of a few years, I didn’t identify as someone who lived in the US or who wanted to live in the US. But this part of the country is incredible and I am super excited about living here and getting to know not only California, but the US in general. It was a great way to explore the area I now live in (and generally this half of the country). I think it made it a bit easier to plan some smaller trips we’d like to take and have already been on.
