Pre-Trip Prep

How are we actually going to pull this off?

So once we decided to take this big ol’ leap, we had to figure out the logistics and reality of it all.

Some of the constraints to consider:

• Dogs.
• ^ Thus, no more than 3–4 hours of driving without a walk/break. And preferably no more 6 hours without a sleep stop.
• Want to see national parks… but with dogs.
• Small-ish vehicle.
• 2 weeks to make it across the country.
• Budget.

If time and money were no object, we would’ve just gotten a van. Actually, in hindsight, we probably should’ve found a way to buy a van someway somehow and made it happen regardless, but hindsight is 20/20. Foresight is… equal parts blurry-gray and shiny-blinding. And the way the light hit it back then, the Subaru looked so spacious.

We tend to be road-trippers when we travel. We’ve road-tripped across Croatia, The Yucatan Peninsula, Southern France, and sort of Colombia (another story for another day). So I’ve landed on a go-to process for figuring out a road trip path and timeline.

It’s nothing fancy, but my tools of the trade are a Google Doc of a weekly timetable, and a Google Map (the kind you can customize).

low-res here. get in touch for the hi-res if you want to follow our itinerary!

So with a deadline and finish line in place, I used my backwards planning teacher skills and connected point A to point B.

• We’d start in Chattanooga, our soon-to-be-hometown on September 10th for the Moon River Music Festival.
• And we’d finish in Mill Valley (near San Francisco) for our friend’s wedding on the 26th.
• Next, we’d make our way down the Pacific Coast Highway to celebrate our ten year anniversary.
• From there, we’d spend 6 weeks in Vegas, building our company and trying on the Digital Nomad life. Like some version of a business retreat.
• Finally, we’d make our way back East, taking a different route than we took out West, for variety’s sake.

Here’s how it all went.