Sabbatical 2019 planning...
In early January we decided to take John’s sabbatical this summer. After a family vote, we opted for a National Parks road trip. This launched an intense research and planning time for me once the girls started back to school after winter break.
Some of the questions we needed to answer quickly:
Make it an RV trip, drive our car, or rent a car?
What Parks to visit?
How long do we want to be on the road?
What will fit into our budget?
We started by asking each of the girls what was at the top of their list to see on this trip. Ranking at the top were the Four Corners and Mount Rushmore. They also wanted to visit Canada on this trip. With that in mind, I started looking at several of the National Parks and made a list of options by state. I will spare you all the research and material I put together to help us narrow down our final itinerary.
After getting a rough itinerary, I spent time looking at renting an RV. We went to a couple of rental places locally to look at different lengths and class types. After estimating RV rental cost, gas for the RV and campground costs, we found it more expensive to make it an RV trip rather than rent a Suburban with hotels and rental houses.
After much research and several changes, we finally landed on a final itinerary. Even thought the map shows a route home, we have decided to leave the route home open to have some flexibility depending on how the girls are doing toward the end of the trip.