The longest road trip I have taken to date is also the last trip I ever took with my father before he died.
A Trip West
In the fall of 2015, my Mom, Dad, and I drove across the United States from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Seattle, Washington. From there, we took a round-trip Alaskan Cruise as far as Skagway, then drove all the way back home afterward. The whole trip took just over three weeks. This is a good definition of fast travel!
I’m not going to lie, it’s more than a little difficult to travel with your aging parents as an independent adult. Especially as an adult that was going through some hard counseling moments at the time. You try digging up family-of-origin issues then spend three weeks in a car with your parents and see how you do.
And of course, I had no idea this would be my last trip with my father. As hard as it was at times (which wasn’t much, really) we had a wonderful time, and I am so overwhelmingly grateful that we got this time together.
Origin
This trip started with the idea of going on an Alaskan cruise, which my mother had wanted to do for a long time. Then I’m sure it was me that talked them into driving to Seattle as an opportunity to see some iconic American sights along the way. Thoughts of going to Yellowstone National Park and Mt. Rushmore seemed like a good idea, so I started planning. The only rule I had to stick to was no more than eight hours of driving per day.
The Plan
So I researched cruise options and prices, planned a route to and from Seattle, and booked all of our accommodations. I used Hotwire.com to book most of our hotels plus VRBO.com to find a cabin near Yellowstone. In all, we drove 6,000 miles, passed through 19 states, took nine days to get there and six to get back, with a seven-day cruise in the middle for 22 total travel days.
Our stops were (and I’ll link to each post as I go):
St. Louis, MO
Sioux Falls, SD
Custer, SD/Mount Rushmore
Yellowstone National Park /Grand Teton National Park (3 nights)
Whitefish, MT/Glacier National Park (2 nights)
Seattle, WA
7-day Princess cruise to Alaska, with visits to:
Juneau
Skagway
Glacier Bay National Park
Ketchikan
Victoria, B.C.
Then back on the road for:
Columbia River Gorge, OR
Pendleton, OR
Salt Lake City, UT
Boulder, CO
Kansas City, KS
Memphis, TN
So come with me while I relive this journey, share our highlights and mistakes, and outline some additional things to do at each of our stops that we didn’t have time for (like I did for my Prince Edward Island road trip.)
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