Some Early Planning For Next Summer

Last Summer, we were lucky enough to go on a summer-long cross country road trip. The trip was so wonderful, we decided to try to get in one more summer-long trip before returning to "normal life" (you know, the land of two week vacations).

Our first road trip had been unscripted: we knew we wanted to go to certain parts of the country: California Redwoods, Glacier Park, Grand Canyon and so on, but, other than sketching out a rough route, we made no other plans, no advance reservations or anything. While this spontaneity had some limitations ( we had a hard time finding a place to stay in some of the more big ticket destinations), it also let us get a nice snapshot of a great many wonderful places all around America.

This year will be a bit different: we will be revisiting a couple of places we really enjoyed from the last trip, and we will also visit a few new ones. With fewer places on the itinerary, we will be spending more time at the places we do visit. We will also be doing some more advance planning for some of the more popular destinations. (For example, we know we want to stay a full week inside Yellowstone National Park and Yellowstone starts booking more than a year in advance).

So here's the rough agenda for next Summer:

We will visit for a second time:

• Grand Teton National Park
• Yellowstone National Park
• The northwoods of Wisconsin

And, we hope to see for the first time:

• Rocky Mountain National Park
• Dinsaur Monument & the Flaming Gorge area of Utah
• Little Bighorn Battlefield
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota)
• Northern Minnesota
  

We 've already started ordering brochures and catalogues and, inthe case of Yellowstone, just made our reservations.