USA National Parks East Tour

We are about halfway through our four week adventure. We have travelled through 12 states and visited four out of the planned ten National Parks for this trip. We have landed at a Home2 Hilton Suites, have a huge corner suite with living room, bedroom with King size bed, tons of work space and tables, huge 2 sink bathroom. It makes up for a couple of the not so nice places we landed in. It mixes it up.

Breakfast was crazy in the morning. It is vacation season in Orlando - aka Disney. Tons of families getting ready to go to the parks for the day. All the kids are excited and loud. We thought about doing Adventure Kingdom but opted out - deciding we need to just chill out. Paul had two assignments due for the Art History II class he is taking while traveling, while Donna finished up making some overdue Christmas cards.

For lunch we went to Applebee’s; had salad’s - then Walmart & Target for some supplies. So studying, crafting, and reruns of the Rookie in the quiet of a very nice suite was perfect.

At this point in the trip (2 weeks) we have developed a pretty decent routine of how to pack the back of the car, and what stuff we need to take into the room on certain types of stops. If it is a one-night quick, sleep stop - we call this our “go-bag” stop. If we need stuff in the bigger suitcases then we need the hotel cart. And we reorganize - do laundry etc.

This trip is Phase One of an experiment. This is the hotel/airBnB phase. Paul is taking costs and we are figuring out what works and doesn’t work. Phase Two (tentative) is to purchase/rent a small popup or teardrop camper and to do a similar 4 week trip to trying camping while doing the National Parks across the Northern part of our country, MN, SD, MO, WY, ID etc. We know we are not campers, but we can do anything for 4 weeks. However one of us might end up at the “Train Station” in Wyoming (“Yellowstone” TV show reference).

The research questions are:

1) Which type of travel works best for both of us?
2) Can we do (enjoy) camping?
3) What is the cost differential camping over hotels/airBNB?
4) So basically a cost benefits analysis.

The more we talk about it, the possible financial savings of camping might not be worth all the extra work of setup and tear down. As well as, the concern for pulling a trailer on the road. So this is still to be determined.

Because than we have all the West Coast and South West National parks to explore. As for doing Alaska there are several tour company’s who will organize a complete trip 3 weeks and you can visit all 8 National Parks. We don’t want to have to worry about anything when we go to Alaska.

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