Summer Road Trip - Your input appreciated

We have decided to do a road trip. I will fly to Texas late May to have some extended new grandybaby time, then Jeff will drive down after school is out.

Then we'll head west eventually getting to Oregon to our son's place before we head back home to NJ. .

If you have any suggestions please share. Suggestions between Texas and Oregon are most appreciated. Some of the places I'd like to hit are:

Carlsbad
Chaco CAnyon in NM or Canyon de Shelly in AZ
Zion NP
Bryce Canyon
Yosemite

Trip home - northern US maybe following RT 2.
Kalispell, MT
Iowa - Antique Archeology - American Pickers
Michigan



This message was edited Feb 7, 2011 12:48 PM

Were in Oregon does your son live?
I am in Lebanon, and if you come in May you will see the iris in full bloom. Then there is a super Peonia farm in Salem

There is so much to see and do here in Oregon, tell me kinds of things.

Our coast line is one of the best on this coast and I have traveled from Canada to Baja Mexico and ours truly is the most beautiful.

Then in Portland you have Pittick Mansion, the Japanese and Chinese gardens our rose garden. Salem has our capital and several mansions to tour. John Day in Eastern Oregon is a killer. Crater Lake in southern Oregon but usually can not get in until mid July.

D

This may help..

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/oregon/2529010020.html

Irisloverdee, our son lives outside of Portland. Oregon's coast truly is beautiful. We have done Crater Lake. I'm planning on going to the Oregon Garden. Definitely will be doing the Japanese and Chinese Garden. We'll probably get there late June, early July. It depends how long it takes us to get there. LOL

Thanks, WC for the link.

Yellowstone!!

Yep, Yellowstone was on a prvious trip. A wondrous place!

Glacier NP.

Definitely and will pop in on a DGer hopefully. He doesn't know it yet, though :)

I'll bet you'll be visiting a few DGers in the NW, Jan!

North route, Mt Rushmore???

Yes, Victor. I plan on sitting on some DGers porches.

Jen, we did Mt. Rushmore on a previous trip. It was the only place I HAD to visit and when we got there I cried as we walked up toward it. Don't know why it affected me that way.

Is there much else to near Mt Rushmore?? That alone would not be enough for me.

Wow, Jen, sounds like it will be a fun trip. Yosemite is a must. I have been there several times, and it never got old. See if you can visit the redwood forests in CA. Amazing! If you get in the Phoenix area, I highly recommend the Desert Botanical Garden. Lost Dutchman's State Park in Apache Junction, AZ is fantastic, but June is awfully hot. One place I never got to see, but it's on my list, is the Saguaro National Park. That's near Tucson, AZ. Then there's the Organ Pipe National Monument in southern AZ near the border. Might not be a good time to be in that area, though. Hot and troubles with drug runners and illegals.

Karen

Carlsbad Caverns are wonderful also White Sands. It is really white & the sands piled up so a tour bus looks tiny. Of course it was great to have a couple teen agers (now in their 40s) rolling down the dunes.

Thanks, nuts, great list of possibilities. I know it will be hot, ( and I don't do hot very well) but the time kinda was predicated by baby's arrival and Jeff's summer vacation from teaching. I just pray the car's AC keeps working.

Victor, There is the Crazy Horse monument also (which we didn't see) and Badlands NP which was interesting. Oh, and Wall Drug store. It's kinda like the advertisements for 'South of the Border' that you see for hundreds of miles. In Wall, SD, there is a huge drug store (and much more)

I was going to mention Badlands, and I forgot about Wall drug, funny! Joshua Tree NP is great.
I agree about the Oregon coast, very nice.