Trip Report: 5 weeks, Boston to San Francisco

[mbb10]

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]