Our departure date is approaching fast! That means I only have a few days to tell you, Reader, what our plans and goals are so that you can hold us to them!

After we had our main stay locked and loaded, the next step was to chart a course to Arizona. We knew right away that we would be driving since we had Dog, and a ton of stuff, and would need a car once we were down there. If we were to drive straight through, it would take us 25hrs to get to our destination. Did you just cringe? Because I reflexively cringed typing that out. A deadhead 25hr drive was out of the question. We could break it up into two roughly equal driving days, but then we would have to waste an entire weekend just…driving. Not ideal. A better solution seemed to be to make a trip out of getting to our trip. We realized that by breaking our drive into four roughly equal legs of ~8hrs and veering slightly off the straightest route, we could hit some cities and parks that are near and dear to our hearts: Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake City among others.

As I mentioned, we’ll be working through this entire trip, so we’ll need reliable access to the internet Monday-Friday. That was our first consideration when mapping out our stops, and our few “vacation days.” Omaha is a lovely city (it’s totally underrated!) that we got to know because I went to school there. We have had one super fun trip to Omaha together as a couple, but think that for this trip it will be used mostly as a stopping point half way to Denver. Unlike the other cities on our list, we don’t have a ton of things that we want to do in Omaha, and there will be limited options for Dog to join us. So a hotel room with a comfy bed and a strong wifi connection will be our priority with this stop. With most of our travel, we plan to work a full day, hit the road around 4PM, and buckle in for 8hrs of travel. Omaha will be one of our shorter stays. We plan to arrive late late late on a Tuesday, and leave right after work on the following Thursday.

Next stop will be Denver, where we are lucky enough to have several friends and family members willing to host us. We will arrive to the apartment of some friends around midnight (they are saints) on Thursday, and work from their home that Friday. That weekend we have an Airbnb rented near Rocky Mountain National Park with one of M’s cousins. We plan on spending the weekend hiking and exploring RMNP, and will actually take our first day off that Monday to extend the adventure. Tuesday through close of business Thursday we will work from that same cousin’s house and explore Denver in the evenings. Then it’s on to Salt Lake City!

M has a friend from college who lives in Salt Lake City who we will crash with the night we arrive. We are taking our second day off to explore Salt Lake the following morning (and to sleep in!) before meandering down to southern Utah that evening where we have a weekend Airbnb rented near Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. We will spend the weekend hiking the area, and then take the following Monday to drop down into Arizona and check into our long term Airbnb.

It will be two weeks of travel that are absolutely jam packed with driving, and exploring, and working. Hopefully we make it! I’ll have a better grasp on the Studs and Duds after we actually arrive at our destination, but my predictive list is below: