Trip Report: 5 weeks, Boston to San Francisco

Hi all! Last year the spouse and I completed a 35-day roadtrip in order to move from Boston to San Francisco. I received some extremely helpful advice from you guys, and completely caught the bug: I’m now planning my next roadtrip! But before I run that itinerary by you, I figured I had better share how the last one went (spoiler, went pretty well!). You can see my original thread here.

The focus was very heavy on hiking. My husband’s #1 ask on a coast-to-coast road trip was to spend a lot of time in Utah. His second and third requests were for the Badlands and for a ghost town. Easy enough! That plus the excellent advice I received from you guys resulted in me saving Mesa Verde for another time, skipping Texas entirely, and heading a lot further north than I had originally planned when I wrote to you.

Statistics:

• Driving
  
  • Miles per day (forward progress, not around town): 143
  • Miles per day (driving days only): 224
• Sleeping
  
  • Nights in Tent: 15
  • Nights in hotels/cabins: 12
  • Nights staying with family/friends: 5
  • Nights in AirBnB: 3
• Budget: $4,450
  
  • Gas: $550
  • Lodging: $2100
  • Food: $1200
  • Other/Tourism: $600
• Best resource: 50 Best Short Hikes in Utah's National Parks. This book was a godsend. We did 21 of the 50 -- I probably won’t call them out individually but they were all excellent. Some of the hikes were really short and some were up to 8 miles.
• Most underrated: Slot Canyons in Utah
• Most overrated: Las Vegas!

The complete trip report is in this google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

Let me know if you have any questions, are planning a similar trip, or have some advice on where I go next!

[edit: after some trouble trying to upload my photos, I decided to just paste a link to the doc I used to build the TR]

Thanks for taking the time to share your adventure with us. Looks as though you had an awesome time.

Look forward to seeing your future trip plans !

Dave.

Welcome back!

Your trip report was very nicely done! I look forward to reading it thoroughly when I have more time.

Your photographs are beautiful; sorry that you had a problem uploading them; it's possible that they were sized too large? The system on this forum generally works pretty well. Since you've already done the hard part (writing it all out), it seems a shame not to share your experience in the way you intended. Most of the folks who use this forum are leery of off-site links, so if you really want people to see this, it would be fabulous--if you have the time, of course--if you could make another run at it, and post your report as a thread for the RTA trip report archives. If you make another attempt and you're still having trouble, let us know what's happening, and perhaps someone can walk you through the process. If you don't have time, we understand.

Either way, thanks so much for sharing. It sounds like you had a wonderful time!

Rick

Nice report! I really enjoyed reading it, and "walking" some of those hikes with you. Thanks for sharing!



Donna