Travel Ideas

Posted on by Laura & Brett

With a new travel plan to look forward to beginning next year, Brett and I have been putting together simple itineraries for future trips, both to escape the eastern winter cold and to visit America’s national parks.

The only “limits” we gave ourselves is that no fall trips should take over six weeks, and winter trips over eight weeks. For example, our first trip, in the fall of 2025, would only be for around four to five weeks, giving us time to get home and settled before winter arrives. The first winter trip we think we’ll take is around six weeks.

Below are some of our itinerary ideas, separated into fall and winter travel.

Fall:

  • New River Gorge NP – Shenandoah NP – Congaree NP – Savannah
  • Badlands NP – Mount Rushmore – Wind Cave NP – Theodore Roosevelt NP – Glacier NP – Yellowstone NP – Grand Teton NP
  • Honolulu – American Samoa NP – Maui &Haleakala NP – Molokai – Big Island & Volcanoes NP
  • Anchorage – Katmai NP – Kenai Fjords NP – Lake Clark NP – Wrangell-St. Elias NP – Denali NP – Glacier Bay NP (we would actually start this trip in the summer)

Winter:

  • Big Bend NP – Tucson – Saguaro NP – White Sands NP – Carlsbad Caverns NP – Guadalupe Mountains NP
  • Pensacola – Key West – Dry Tortugas NP – Everglades NP – Biscayne Bay NP – Florida East Coast – New Orleans, LA
  • Joshua Tree NP – Santa Barbara – Channel Islands NP – Los Robles, CA – Pinnacles NP – San Simeon – Death Valley NP – Petrified Forest NP
  • San Miguel de Allende

You may notice Kaua’i is not included in our Hawaii adventure. We’d love to go, but “been there, done that,” and we’d rather spend on getting to American Samoa (flights twice a week from Honolulu only). We joke that we’d probably have to be peeled off of Kaua’i anyway if we did go.

So, lots to look forward to!

Published by Laura & Brett

Slow traveling the world with a sense of adventure!

8 thoughts on “Travel Ideas”

  1. Hi! Keep in mind that snow can fly at any time at Yellowstone plus all the roads in and out of Yellowstone can be impassable. We saw snow every month of the year while living not too far from Tetons and Yellowstone. Joy

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    1. Our plans are will be very flexible. For the Yellowstone/Teton trip we would probably head west in late August and see them first, then head up to the Dakotas, weather permitting, before coming back home.

      I remember visiting Yellowstone in July when I was a child; the staff was getting ready to celebrate Christmas because they knew December would be impossible.

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      1. Christmas in July is a tradition in Yellowstone. Good planning to get up there first, although my parents were snowed in with us in mid September 1982.

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      2. I remember Christmas in July because a) all the staff was excited about it, and b) a couple of the staff invited us to their celebration! We didn’t go, but the invite was so nice of them.

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  2. These itineraries look very ambitious. Will you have the flexibility to scale back and/or stay somewhere longer if you want to?

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    1. We think we’ve given ourselves a big enough window – we mapped out a few of these itineraries and had more than enough time to do and see what we wanted. The hardest part for us will be the time it takes to drive out west, but we plan to stick to a southern route and should be okay. Latest we’d be out in the fall would be mid-October; winter trips would either be January-February or February-March.

      Flexibility is perhaps our strongest advantage; if things need to change or be dropped, it happens with no hard feelings.

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