Cross Country Honeymoon - CT to OR with stops in bewtween

[jeanie19]

Hi everyone,
I have been reading the forums on here for a while and now that my husband and I are really starting to plan our trip, I figured I should post our tentative plan and see if anyone has any advice and/or recommendations. We live in Connecticut and plan on leaving on April 28th and arriving in Portland Oregon on May 26th to fly back home that weekend. Below is our tentative route with the list of places that we would both like to see.

1. Drive to Easton, PA and visit our favorite brewery
2. Mammoth Cave, KY (a must see)
3. St. Louis, MO
4. Tallgrass Prairie National Park, Cottonwood Falls, KS
5. Mesa Verde National Park (a must see)
6. Grand Canyon (a must see)
7. possibly yosemtie (weather dependent) or death valley
8. somewhere in western CA to get us on the Pacific Coast Highway
9. Redwood National Park (a must see)
10. Ending in Portland, Oregon

We plan on camping as much as possible in state, national, and/or local parks, stopping in hotels every 5th or 6th night to do laundry and sleep in a real bed. We are avid campers and have fantastic equipment so we will be sleeping well enough in our tent. We want to see as much as possible in the western part of the country (AZ, CO, UT...) as we have seen and done most of the east coast attractions already. We obviously want to try and see as many of the national parks as we can along the way without overdoing it and we tried to plan our route around our four "must-see" parks.

We are thinking that we will make it out to Mesa Verde by May 5th or 6th, which would give us about 3 weeks to explore the western states and make our way to Oregon. We are very open to suggested routes to try and hit our desired attractions, or any places along the way that you guys think are worth visiting.

Does our trip seem reasonable? We don't want to feel rushed, which is why we are only driving one way and flying back to CT. Are we still trying to do too much, or should we be able to enjoy the national parks and our honeymoon?

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA forum!

I think it looks like you've got a splendid plan that will be very nice for you.

Based on your interest in Mesa Verde, I'd also look at some of the other archeological based national parks in the region (there are several, although MV is the biggest). Really, the entire four corners area is packed full of other parks that I'm sure you'll want to explore.

I will say that even if Tioga Pass is still closed at the time of your trip, I'd still strongly recommend giving it a visit. If you have to go around to the south, then Sequoia would also be a good potential stopping point.