The Idea
At some point during the spring of 2017, someone presented the brilliant idea of my mom and I taking an “out west” road trip together. I truly cannot remember how this idea even came about, but no matter, my mom and I liked the idea. For basically any other trip or vacation that I had been on, I always had an itinerary before departing. I knew when we were leaving, when we were getting back, where we would be staying, what we would be doing each day, and basically any other important information most people bother to figure out before traveling. For this trip, however, we hardly planned anything. We knew what day we were leaving, and we knew of some sites that we wanted to visit, but we did not make a single reservation before we left, and we did not even have an exact day that we wanted to be back.
Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that we were just setting sail to aimlessly drive around the western frontier and then we would just turn back after five days (although honestly our actual trip wasn’t too far from that).
I did do some research on the National Parks out west and other interesting places that we could visit, so we at least had a ~rough~ idea of places that we wanted to stop, but nothing was really set in stone. About one month after concocting this trip, we were ready to buckle our belts, put on our shades and set sail on what would become a road trip through nine states, where we visited two national parks, two national natural landmarks, a national memorial and the filming locations of three movies and a television show.
The night before we left, I started and finished all of my packing, trying my best to be organized and prepared for whatever we were about to encounter. As always, I packed too much, but seeing how we were going to be spending the better part of a week or more in the car, I think it’s justifiable. So, with all of our bags, backpacks, coolers, and maps loaded into the car, we were as ready as we would ever be to begin what would become a ten day whirlwind road trip.