Starting to plan trip west. Would like to go northern route first and come home southern route. Any suggestions for stopping points? Especially good swimming and tent camping sites?
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Starting to plan trip west. Would like to go northern route first and come home southern route. Any suggestions for stopping points? Especially good swimming and tent camping sites?
Welcome to the RTA Forum!
You're really going to have to give us a lot more detail before anyone will be able to provide much in the way of help. How much time do you have for this trip? What do you consider to be a northern/southern route? What kinds of things are you interested in? Which places do you already know you want to visit.
Certainly there are a lot of articles, forum posts, and other tools (like the RTA Map Center) here that can help you with your planning, but those are the kinds of things people have to know before they can even start to give you any specific advice.
Welcome to RTA!
Some extra thoughts, beyond what Michael has suggested: it will take you about 4-5 days on the road one way to reach Healdsburg from St Louis. It's 2100 miles, and when you're tenting, you'll need time to set up camp at night and break down in the morning. Choice tent spots are not usually located right along the major highways, so you also need to add that extra time to leave the highways to find those good camping places. So I wouldn't plan to drive more than 450-500 miles in one day. That mileage is via "the shortest route", not necessarily the one you may want to use.
That said -- when we were tent camping, we always looked for state forests, state parks, national forests and national parks to stay in. They had the nicest facilities that were actually made with tents in mind. On a paper map, these are usually annotated with a green triangle. We didn't care much for commercial campgrounds at that point, because most of those are built for trailers and motorhomes. Those with tent sites often have them as an after-thought and often in the most impossible section of the campground. Yes, that includes KOA's. They were also far more expensive.
Do let us know how long you have for this trip and what types of things you have in mind to see and do. Then we can make recommendations.
Donna