Coming soon: "BT3 By Land and Sea"

We've been packing for and plotting planning an extensive road trip for months now. I *might* even have a route spreadsheet complete with driving times, average lodging costs per night, and special directions to our alternative choice of lodgings in National Forests. As long as work doesn't call me away for disaster response (and I'm prepared if it does), this thing is going down very soon.

Double Arrow Lookout, Lolo National Forest, Montana (Photo credit to Chris Mader)

Credit for naming this road trip goes to my husband who jokingly came up with the little rhyme, stealing the whole creative show in an instant. He's sneaky like that sometimes.

The first part of the name, "Big Trip", or affectionately known around the Davis digs as "BT" is how we differentiate a "normal" road trip such as this one (a few days long) with a major one. This trip will be the third major road trip we've taken together over the last 11 years. The first and original Big Trip came only months after getting together. The second took place in 2013 a few years after we bought the boat when we thought we were ready to sail away to the Bahamas (as it turned out, we weren't). That boils down to one major road trip approximately every 3.66 years. Not too shabby.

Bixby Creek Bridge, Big Sur, California ~ March 2014

Big Trips are in another category than shorter road trips because on them the road becomes your temporary home. Change is constant and even with the best of plans things happen to throw a wrench into the whole deal. And trust me, we've been there, big time.

But hopefully this trip will be different than the others. For starters, we're leaving next week and going when it's actually still warm out! On the other two trips we started out in January and November, respectively. Since we often slept in tents or White Fang the Adventure Minivan, we were constantly thinking up news ways to combat cold.

Cold weather camping in Gold Beach, Oregon ~ January 2007

Dungeness Spit, Sequim, Washinton ~ November 2013

But we still had fun and thankfully certainly didn't have to deal with a lot of competition for campsites. The trade-off was that we wound up battling the elements again and again. Sometimes we won, sometimes Mother Nature thumbed her nose at us. Both times we eventually beat feet as far south as possible, to Mexico and to the Florida Keys.

This road trip, we're doing something else differently as well. Every other time we've stuck to the coasts and the southern states as much as possible. We did so in part because it's generally warmer in such places and also because we just like being coastal. For me, traveling along the California coast especially will never get old or be any less breathtaking.

But there is so much more to see of the natural beauty of this great country. Since we've taken the same route up and down the Pacific Coast Highway quite a few times now, we agreed that it was time to drag anchor inland for a while and see some new places.

One of our bookings, the adorable Cowpuncher Guard Station Yurt in Utah's Dixie National Forest

Our intended route is to fly down to Seattle where we will pick up our "new-to-us" Dodge Sprinter cargo van and our stuff that we sent down on the barge. Then, we'll drive toward the first of many alternative lodgings I booked for us in Montana and Utah, such as the Canyonlands National Park Needles District Campground.*

By snowpeak (Canyonlands  Uploaded by PDTillman) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Even though we're traveling during what's technically known as a "shoulder season", places like the ones we're staying at are both rare and popular enough that they get scooped up many months in advance. And scoop them up we did, nearly as soon as they became available in early spring.

Warner Lake Cabin, Manti-La Sal National Forest, Utah

Sure, with a relative lack of facilities in general and an outhouse, most are primitive enough. But I'll take accommodations that have a view like this over even the cushiest of hotels any day.**

View from Double Arrow Lookout, Lolo National Forest, Montana (Photo credit to Philip Chumbley)

Next up, the how-to of finding and booking alternative lodging and why we prefer it whenever possible.

*After that, our plans are a lot looser and work responsibilities are sadly going to but a cramp in this BT. But at least the cruising kitty will be better for it.
**Unless it has an exceptional swimming pool. Then, I would have to really do some soul-searching.