Longest road trips

That’s a great plan. I’m trying to get out now while I’m young to see as much of the US as possible, and take the time off work now before I have kids which I assume makes it quite a bit harder.

When I do have kids though I’m going to do my best to get them outside and away from all this damn technology whether it’s local camping or road trips

 

Yeah, I'll say about my trip to Oregon and back to AZ is in hindsight I wish I had taken more time to go to places and stop along the way. We did see some amazing scenery and on the way back down I made the decision to cut west from I-5 at Grants Pass over to Crescent City so we'd go straight through Redwood National Forest and it did not disappoint. I'd love to go back to the SF area and spend some time there, along with camping up in the Redwoods. We also went to the coast in Oregon to my hometown and THAT part was really great. Loved driving through town in my own rig and not a rental!

Funny thing about the trip is in the middle of March we went through all four seasons and maybe one or two not officially recognized, LOL! Rain through Cali, snow on the Siskiyou Pass, gorgeous spring weather in Oregon and hot getting hotter as we came back through SoCal and back into Arizona. I had to use the AC for the first time this year driving back into Phoenix!

I love road trips. Definitely want to plan more and really take advantage of all the things along the way.

 

I limit the amount of "screen" time my daughter has she only has a leap pad for a "gaming" system. We are outdoors types. We didn't really start going places other than the beach or mtns until she was a little over 3 longer trips with a younger kid can be tough. We flew to Oregon when she was a little over a yr for my sister's wedding and that was very stressful. But we had a great time in the Mt. Hood area. They got married at the lodge on Mt. Hood. I actually skiied in July which was really cool. Definitely going to make another trip out that way again.

 

This is the longest for me....did this trip after having my truck for 6 months, and the camper shell for 2 weeks. This doesn't include all the driving I did within Yellowstone and Grand Tetons. You can safely add 700-800 miles on top of this total below.....

No issues at all during this trip

 

Do it now. I was 25 when I started long road tripping, life will pass you by quick. Wife, then kids, then mortgage, then grown up responsibilities..... I settled down at 32 and had to grow up. Trips are all short now and I live vicariously through sites like this and advrider. My long tacoma and motorcycle road trip days are over. One day when the kids are grown, and I hit mandatory retirement, I'll try it all again...

 

My future trip for June 2019. Will be traveling with the Wife, Kid and Dog so we will see who makes it to the finish line. We are taking 25 days to do the trip and explore. .

 

Why Homer?
I want to go to AK but I don't know how far in I really want to go. Part of me really wants to go as far North as possible.

 

10,000 miles over a month to / around / from Alaska in 2017. Lived out of it.

5,700 miles in 11 days hauling my dirt bike to Tennesee to ride (ironically only rode 400 miles!) with friends from back home in 2018. Lived out of it.

Those were in the 4R though. No offense to those that haven't done the days / miles, but I don't even think of 1000 miles as a long trip anymore.

Doing 2700 miles with my wife over 3 days in late April in a standard cab 4 cyl Taco - flying to Ohio to buy it and then hauling ass home... I expect it to be just fine, maybe a tad cramped... sleeping in shifts so it'll be nonstop.

Random offer - we're on the north coast of Calif on US 101 - you can't go up the coast without passing our house. TW peeps always got a bed, shower, and place to wrench if they be passing thru, just PM me.

 

South coast is incredible. Homer, Valdez, all the fjords and glaciers...it's awesome. Farther north you go it's really just for the bragging rights. Dempster / Dawson, while cool enough to do once, are just long slogs ending in a U-turn. Dalton ends at Deadhorse and it's a total industrial shithole. We did Alaska a year ago and figured out pretty quick about the good stuff... heading back this year and we'll do two things significantly different based on prior experience: take the ferry one way and drive one way (instead of driving both ways), and hang out mainly on the south coast (minus taking the train for a few days to Denali NP...)

 

Do the BC option! I drive from Vancouver to dease lake for moose hunting every year. The Cassiar mountain range and Alaskan Hwy are breathtaking.

 

Go to Colorado and then drive up through the Rockies in both the US and Canada. The plains states/provinces are mind numbingly boring.

 

You win.

 

I was going to say the same. BC has many mountain ranges. The border with Alberta is the height of land of the Rockies for a good portion. East of that is flat, flat, flat.

 

I have done three trips to Alaska which are my long distance trips. #1 was in 1982 or 83 in a station wagon from Chicago and was around 11k, only got as far north as Chicken AK, Top of the World Highway & the Arctic Circle , my dads retirement trip. #2 was a the longest from SW COLORADO, a total of 13k+ miles and included Top of the world Highway, Arctic Circle, a loop around Alaska and part of the west coast. #3 also from SW COLORADO took me to Tuktoyutuk and Top of the World Highway and was about 10k+ miles because it got cut short, only got to do about 1/4 of Alaska. Looking forward to number 4 in or around 2022 and going to Tuktoyutuk again and this time I hope to do Deadhorse on the same trip.
Another long distance trip I am looking forward to is Trans Labrador Highway trip

 

The longest road trip I've done was between Calgary, Alberta and Toronto, Ontario. I've done it four times. It's about 2,100 miles one way. Makes you appreciate how big our countries are. Plus gives you a lot of time to think, and to enjoy the scenery.

Correction:

My dad and l drove from.Calgary to Las Angeles back in the early 80s. Straight down Highway 2 in Alberta to Interstate 15. It was 2,500 mIles.

l still remember them widening I15 to a real highway from the old 2 lane sections. Looking up and at the new concrete sections being worked on.

At the time I never thought that the trip would really mean anything to me. But it was a great experience to have with my dad.

 

Last summer, we left the Atlanta area and drove through Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, then up through Calgary to Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenai National parks, then back through Saskatoon and Winnipeg before heading back home through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois...

All told, around 7,900 miles with 4 adults in a double cab Tacoma...

This year we were planning to drive to Anchorage and back... but my daughter has a college class that is going to interfere with those plans.

But... there is always next year...

-Bear

 

So here is the trip my wife and I did with the two kids in 2016.
That was the first leg. We stopped to visit in TN and the Diamond Mine park in Arkansas, then across to Carlsbad Caverns, Roswell, VLA, Painted Forest, and into Flagstaff.
Stayed there with friends for a while and did some local scenery and the Grand Canyon.

Stage two took us North - Monument Valley, 4 Corners, Arches, Salt Lake and the Saltaire!, then on to Yellowstone.

Stage 3 is really 3 and 4. We visited family in MN before going home via the UP of Michigan. Then Canada to Niagra, and then home to LI NY.

The back was fully and efficiently loaded.


Loaded with bikes too near Carlsbad Caverns.

This was later around Beartooth Pass on the way out of Yellowstone.

It's too late at night to keep posting. I will post the 2018 trip around the Great Lakes soon.

Thanks for looking.

 

Done several cross country trips in my 2001 4Runner. It's been to 43 states with me, I've been to 44...

I've done:

Alabama to Moab and back, about 5k miles.

South Carolina to the San Juan Mountains in Colorado and back, around 4k miles.

Alabama to Tadoussac, Canada and back, around 4k miles.

Alabama to Southern California and back, around 6k miles.

And most recently I did a 9k mile trip, Alabama, to Wisconsin, to Seattle, to California, to Utah and then back to Alabama. That was nearly 3 weeks of driving, wheeling, site seeing, and stopping at 13 national parks. It was awesome. I didn't want it to end, so I made the most of my time everywhere and drove from Hanksville, Utah to Huntsville, AL straight through by myself... 1650 miles in less than 30 hours. My truck rolled over 250k miles on the odometer halfway through this trip. The only thing I replaced was two headlights that burnt out. Gotta Love a Toyota.

There should be trip reports in that section of this forum for all of these minus the last one I'm struggling to find time to do, for anyone who may be interested. If they aren't here I just need to copy them over from another forum they're posted on.

Road trips are an awesome way to see the country. If you have the opportunity to do a trip like this you should take it. Gas is cheap and you can camp along the way to have a great relatively cheap vacation.

 

I love Whistler, was up there a few years back, a.d it made seriously consider missing the flight and just staying in in BC