Is it inviting trouble that we’ve named our travel blog after a play on the title of one of Hitchcock’s most famous movies?
And so, we’ve now entered a phase of critical importance for our upcoming road trip: we started telling other people about it. When the idea was born, it was just the two of us. Then, we shared our plans with only a few people, mainly to get their travel advice and / or reality check on our ambitious plans. So today we’ve found ourselves looking behind us at a few milestones before the “point of no return:” Marc has requested the time off from work, I told my parents about the vacation, and we bought a laptop to update this very travel blog along the way. Now the social pressures to pull this off are here!
The plans are simple, to travel 4,023 miles in 17 days of travel. Most likely I will pick up Marc at work on Thursday night and we’ll drive out directly from there. The first night I don’t know where we’ll wind up, other than past Madison, WI (a two hour drive) and if all goes well we’ll get a campground somewhere in Minnesota.
What do you think? Should we do the vacation? Take the poll here…
From there, things will get interesting. We’ll stop in Sioux Falls briefly, then to the Badlands, take in Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, stop for a few days in Yellowstone before heading to Glacier National Park in Montana, then head up to Banff, race across Saskatchewon (which I still need to double check the spelling of), park in Winnipeg, and end it all in Minneapolis before heading home. Here’s a Google Map of the latest plan of the route.
In addition to reaching the point where we started telling friend, family, and coworkers, we’ve also entered the stage where we have created a list of things to bring & buy. Also, we’re looking for someone to take care of our dog for two weeks, which is a tall order since it’s such a long period of time.
Who knows what the trip will wind up looking like in the end. All we can hope for is that we will be able to see beautiful nature, have laughs along the way, and if the journey diverts us from the original plan, so be it. That is after all, what traveling is supposed to be about.
