Dark Lord's Cross Country Trip Report 2013

[Dark Lord]

awesome trip man, and yay for dash cams... not gonna lie a little jelly about the road trip, i want to do one but i fear it wont happen cause im a go big or go home kinda guy, it want to go all the way back to DC and yeah im not sure ill ever have that much time off work with the $$$ to do it, and having kids really slows things down. looks like you had an awesome time though and glad you shared with us

Yeah, I'm 25 and I've learned that if I want to do some traveling, I need to get it out of my system before I ever have children. If I had kids and wanted to do this, I would start saving, then plan on quitting my job to travel for a few months (if I can get another job easily). I've done a lot of reading and there are many ways to do it. My girlfriend's aunt and her husband both quit their jobs to go on a 3 month travel around East Asia. Granted, her husband didn't really quit his, he went on a 3 month leave of absence, but she quit her's with intentions on job hunting when they got back.

Traveling overseas is expensive, but cross country is not. We had intentions to try to get all 50 states in, but we didn't get the time allotted we had hoped. Either way, if we even had an extra month we probably wouldn't have even gone to the east coast. The east coast just never really interested us that much. We would've just spent more time in Utah and Colorado, then probably ventured up the north west coast. I will say though, the trip was relatively inexpensive. Gas was the biggest expense. I'll have to talk to my girlfriend to get the exact figure, but gas was around $1400-$1700 for the entire trip. We stayed in a hotel maybe once every 2-4 days, and we used a cheap hotel app on our phone to get the best deals. Next time we do a trip like this we are definitely buying a rooftop tent. Sleeping in the back of the 4runner gets old after a while.....

I would like to travel the world, but my dream is to do a journey down to South America in the 4runner..... one day.....

 

[BrianSD_42]

How did the logistics work?

Im curious because taking girls on these trips can be difficult. Did you sleep every other night in a hotel? How do you shower on the road?

Trip pics look amazing BTW.

 

[hrt4me]

thanks for posting those photos; it looks like you and yours did everything in one trip which my wife and I are taking several years to do and see...

three summers ago my wife and I toured Yosemite, the Muir Woods and Napa Valley

two summers ago my wife and I toured California, Arizona and New Mexico when we bought a 4Runner and drove it back to Texas

last summer we bought another 4Runner and toured California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico on our way back to Texas

this summer we plan to drive from north Texas to Yellowstone NP and maybe even venture into British Columbia...

 

[Dark Lord]

How did the logistics work?

Im curious because taking girls on these trips can be difficult. Did you sleep every other night in a hotel? How do you shower on the road?

Trip pics look amazing BTW.

We stayed in a hotel about every 2-4 nights depending on how we felt, or if we could find a feasible spot to camp. We also stayed with a few relatives along the way in Colorado and California. We actually found that it wasn't too expensive to stay in a hotel/motel on the road due to our hotel app on the iPhone. We mostly camped at rest stops, truck stops, and wherever we thought convenient. We thought for showers we would be taking showers at truck stops, but ended up never doing that. We mostly just washed up a little bit each day (baby wipes and water) and waited til we got to a relative's home or decided to stay in a hotel (if it was cheap). A couple of times we went swimming at a hot spring (one in Orray, CO and Twin falls, ID). We took showers using the showers provided at the hot spring pools.

 

[downpour11]

Sounds like you found a keeper. The past couple girls I've dated over the years would probably only last maybe 3 days doing that haha

Love the pics man, would be very fun to be able to do something like that!

 

[BigFishAllDay]

After your post in my build thread I decided to dig up this thread and have a look...

WOW! :hatsoff:

You originally posted this thread shortly before I left for my Moab trip, and last I saw there was just the preview video and a couple pictures. It was a nice surprise to come back and see the full set of pictures. Looks like an absolutely EPIC road trip, and I'm a little envious having read through it. I like the way you guys documented everything too, with the signs as you crossed state lines.

Thanks for taking the time to write-up your trip, you showed us all a bunch of places that have been on my "want to visit" list for a long time.

 

[Dark Lord]

After your post in my build thread I decided to dig up this thread and have a look...

WOW! :hatsoff:

You originally posted this thread shortly before I left for my Moab trip, and last I saw there was just the preview video and a couple pictures. It was a nice surprise to come back and see the full set of pictures. Looks like an absolutely EPIC road trip, and I'm a little envious having read through it. I like the way you guys documented everything too, with the signs as you crossed state lines.

Thanks for taking the time to write-up your trip, you showed us all a bunch of places that have been on my "want to visit" list for a long time.

Thanks for the kind comments. The idea of this trip was in the works for about 6-8 months. It didn't start getting serious until we were about 2-3 weeks out from our leave date. Once it was confirmed I got the job in Austin, my girlfriend requested 3 1/2 weeks of leave (a deal she had worked out with her boss a couple months in advance). A week before we left, we literally picked out a bunch of destinations then mapped it out (took probably an hour or two, we kinda winged it). My dad and I built my sleeping platform about two days out, and I got my tire carrier fabbed up the day before (yeah we kind of did some things last minute). After I quit my job in Indiana, we began our trip.

The trip itself felt kind of rushed at times because we wanted to cover so much ground in a short amount of time. Overall though, the trip was perfect! We hit all the main points, and saw all the main attractions at each park. Next time we will most likely focus more of our time in Utah and probably Yellowstone. We would also like to get more hiking in.

Speaking of next time, we came up with an idea for our next trip. We are thinking about driving to Alaska. It's just in the idea stage right now, and probably wouldn't be possible for at least another year, but we believe this is a realistic next step for our travels. I'm thinking for next time a rooftop tent is 100% in order. I say this because I'm tall, and sleeping in the back of the 4runner gets old after so many times...

 

[BrianSD_42]

This trip report was so good I sent the link to my parents who both watched the video and looked through all the pictures. They agreed it looked like awesome trip.