The destination is Sand Hollow State Park in Utah. That decision came first, and it gets several days at the far end of the trip. Everything else on this route exists to answer one question, which is very much a Ron question: if we’re driving a motorhome and a Jeep across the country anyway, why would we waste the miles?
His answer: Jeep Badge of Honor trails. If you’re not familiar, Badge of Honor is Jeep’s program that recognizes some of the toughest and best-known trails in the country – you run the trail, you check in, you earn the badge. Ron mapped the route west through parks with Badge of Honor trails that line up on the way, so every drive day delivers us somewhere worth wheeling.
There’s a second reason for the trail list. We’re traveling with two other couples who have run almost all of the Badge of Honor trails – if not all of them. Part of the fun of this route is wheeling those trails together and making sure they capture any badges they don’t have yet along the way. Some trips you plan around places. This one is partly planned around finishing a list, and I respect a list.
I’ve already written about how we plan a trip this size – the reservations, the packing, the food math. This post is the route itself: where we’re stopping, and why.
Stop 1: Hawk Pride Mountain Offroad Park – Tuscumbia, Alabama
First stop, one state over, which is exactly what you want on day one of towing a Jeep behind a motorhome – a short leg to shake out the setup. Hawk Pride is home to the Uphill Both Ways Badge of Honor trail.
Stop 2: Byrd’s Adventure Center – Ozark, Arkansas
Byrd’s sits on the Mulberry River in the Ozarks, and its Byrd’s Heritage Trail is on the Badge of Honor list. This is the kind of stop that makes the route philosophy work: a real destination in its own right that happens to sit almost exactly where a drive day ends.
Stop 3: Crossbar Ranch – Davis, Oklahoma
Crossbar is one of Oklahoma’s Badge of Honor locations – rocky, technical, and a completely different flavor of terrain than the wooded Southeast parks we started in. By this point in the trip the group has a rhythm: drive a day, wheel a day.
Stop 4: Merus Adventure Park – Claude, Texas
Merus sits in canyon country in the Texas Panhandle, and it’s the stop I’m most curious about – terrain unlike anything else on this route.
Stop 5: Pucker Falls – Escondida, New Mexico
The name tells you what you need to know, and yes, I’ve asked. This is the last wheeling stop before we trade trails for scenery for a few days.
The Detour I Negotiated: North Rim and Vermillion Cliffs
Between New Mexico and Utah, the route bends north for the two stops that are mine: the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Vermillion Cliffs. Two sightseeing stops on a three-week trip. I fought for both, I’m proud of both, and I’ve made peace with the ratio. Mostly.
The Destination: Sand Hollow State Park – Hurricane, Utah
Then the reason for all of it. Sand Hollow gets several days – sand dunes, slickrock, and some of the most famous wheeling terrain in the country, with a reservoir right there because apparently Utah decided to build a park specifically for people like us. After two weeks of one-day stops, parking for several days in one place is its own kind of luxury. This is where the trip stops being a route and becomes a destination.
Then We Point It Home
The drive back is the unscripted part – three or four days, loosely planned on purpose, because the four-week trip two years ago taught us that the best stops are sometimes the ones you didn’t book. Gia will be along for all of it, with her off-leash stops mapped like fuel. You can read all about how we plan our travel with Gia in our recent blog post.
Every stop on this list is a future post – what the trails were actually like, what the parks get right, and what we’d tell you before you go. Follow along. We leave in thte fall, and I’ll let you know which parts of the plan survived contact with the road.
| Want the full system behind this route? The itinerary, the reservations, the drive-day math – it all lives in the Trip Ready Planner, part of our Adventure Together Pack. It’s the planner this exact route is built in. |
