Travel plans complete (mostly)

As of today, I think the plans for our trip are complete.

New York

We will start off in New York City, as Olivia always wanted to visit the city that never sleeps. We will visit all the “must sees” and also see a musical and have some fine dining experience.

East coast to west coast

After three days, we will head to Calfornia to meet David with his kids in Los Angeles. But this time, we will take the adventurous route: Instead of just flying from NYC to LAX, we will take the train! This way, we can even incorporate some more sights into our itinerary:

• Taking the Train 63 “Maple Leaf”, we will see the beautiful Hudson River Valley and have a half day “stop-over” in Niagara Falls
• Shortly after midnight, we will board Train 49 “Lake Shore Limited” in Buffalo Depew Station heading to Chicago, IL along the great lakes. We will have 4.5hrs of time in Chicago, so hopefully we will be able to stroll through downtown before we embark
• Train 3 “Southwest Chief” heading to Los Angeles. We will have the luxury of a Roomette in the train, so we can “live” and sleep during this 3 day train ride from east coast to west coast.

Amtrak has a cool feature on their website where you can track all of their trains while en route.

Los Angeles

We will stay in Los Angeles for four days meeting David and his kids, and of course, when travelling with kids we HAVE to go to Disneyland. We then will head back to David’s in Monterey and stay there for a couple of days.

Roadtrip through the West

As soon as we pick up our rental car from SFO, we will immediately start our road trip and even though I was in the U.S. travelling many times, this will be by far the longest and most exciting trip through the western United States. The tour will bring us to:

• Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Park
• Three Rivers, CA
• Lake Isabella
• Lone Pine
• Death Valley NP
• Las Vegas
• Hoover Dam
• Grand Canyon NP
• Marble Canyon
• Page, AZ
• Antelope Canyon(s)
• Horseshoe Bend
• Monument Valley (if we can squeeze it in)
• Vermillion Cliffs / The Wave (only if we win the day lottery)
• St. George, UT (Iceberg is waiting for us)
• Zion NP
• Bryce Canyon NP
• Grand Staircase Escalante
• Capitol Reef NP
• Moab, UT
• Arches NP
• Canyonlands NP
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Yellowstone NP
• Lake Tahoe
• Mono Lake
• Bodie Ghost Town
• Lee Vining
• Yosemite NP
• San Francisco

What a list of sights – I know this might suffice for several trips, but this year we have the time for it and I tried to plan our itinerary in a way that doesn’t require me driving long distances every day. So we will mostly stop for a couple of days in one location to have enough time to hike and take photos.

Can’t wait to start travelling!