” If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else” Yogi Berra

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you have a pretty good idea that I’m a planner.   I like to know where I’m going, how I’m getting there, and what I’ll be doing while I’m there.  While I’m slowly learning to be more spontaneous, I’m still much more comfortable when the damn ducks are in a row.

When we planned this trip, we knew we’d be staying in the Columbus Ohio area for a few months.

Then, we’d planned to take the RV to New York for several weeks, after which we’d take our grandson back across the country with us.

One of the issues when planning a cross-country RV trip is finding RV parks along the route.   There are many resources we use, and we’ve been pretty lucky thus far in finding places to stay, that is until we started looking for a place in New York that was close enough to family and our old home.     We just weren’t able to find anything we felt comfortable parking Big Bella in for a few weeks that didn’t require an hours drive to see family and friends.

So, the New York portion of the trip has now become a three-day quick turnaround in the car.  We’ll drive up the day before our grandson is out of school and head back to Columbus the day after.    Then we will leave on The Big Return Trip the following day.

While I’ll miss seeing old friends this time, a part of me is relieved that I won’t be in the area long enough for nostalgia to get me.    As happy as we are with our choices in the last year, there is a still a part of me that is missing what I gave up ( the house, the yard, etc.).    I think I need a bit more time to settle into the now before I can fondly revisit what was.

So we’ll grab the kid and head west.   We have all of our stops planned ( of course ) and have scheduled a few fun things too.    We’ll stop in Cortez Colorado for two nights so we can take a tour of Mesa Verde National Park.   Then we’ll head to Williams Arizona for two nights where we’ll take the Grand Canyon Railway into the Grand Canyon for a day.  We stopped there last year on our way west but weren’t able to book the train, so that was on our list of “must-do next time.”

As long as we are fortunate and have no issues with the planned 300-400 miles per day, we should stay on schedule and arrive back in Las Vegas on July 2nd.

Travel Dervish Dave may have some adjustments though.   If he thinks a weebly-wobbly redhead is hard to get moving in the morning, wait till he experiences a fourteen-year-old and a sofa bed that needs to be stowed every morning.

Should be interesting and great blog fodder.

Stay tuned…