This fall we’re pulling out of the driveway for three weeks. A motorhome towing a Jeep. Six offroad parks in six states. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Other couples along for the ride. And a 40-pound dog who has done a long trip before and will still bark at the departure like it’s news.
We’ve already written about how we plan trips together without it turning into a fight – who owns what, how the budget works, how we check in. That system is the foundation, and it doesn’t change whether the trip is two days or three weeks. [Internal link: how we split the planning.] This post is the other half: what the plan itself actually looks like when the trip is this big. The route, the reservations, the packing, the group, the dog.
This isn’t our first long trip. We did four weeks two years ago, and that trip taught us most of what’s in this post – some of it the easy way, some of it in a Walmart parking lot at 9pm. If you’re thinking about a big trip like this, here’s how we actually build one. Not the highlight reel version. The real one.
Anchor the Route, Then Build Backward
This trip exists because of Sand Hollow in Utah. That’s the anchor – it gets three full days of wheeling at the far end of the route. Everything else got built backward from there.
Once the anchor was set, Ron laid out the wheeling stops that break up the drive: Hawks Pride in Alabama, Byrd’s Adventure Center in Arkansas, Crossbar Ranch in Oklahoma, Merus Adventure Park in Texas, and Pucker Falls in New Mexico. The rhythm is simple – drive a day, wheel a day. Nobody’s doing 700-mile pushes, and nobody’s sitting still long enough to get restless.
I negotiated for two sightseeing stops: the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Vermillion Cliffs. Two, out of a three-week trip. I want that ratio on the record. But that negotiation is part of the planning too. If one person builds the whole route, the other person is just a passenger for three weeks, and that’s not the trip either of you wants.
The Plan Is a Starting Point, Not a Contract
The four-week trip taught us this one. Ron had reservations lined up the whole way. We still ended up changing the schedule, and we still spent a night in a parking lot. Weather happens. Trails take longer than you think. Sometimes a place is better than you expected and you want another day.
So now we book the things that actually need booking – the anchor destination, the stops where campgrounds fill up – and we hold the middle of the trip loosely. There’s a real tradeoff here. Loose plans mean occasionally scrambling for a spot. Rigid plans mean skipping the best unplanned moments of the trip. We’ve decided we’d rather scramble.
Packing for Three Weeks Is Its Own Skill
I pack by trip type, not by guesswork. This trip crosses six states in September, which means we could see 95 degrees in Texas and near-freezing mornings at the North Rim. So I pack for heat, cold, rain, and a minor medical emergency, and I don’t apologize for any of it.
Ron thinks I overdo it. Ron has also, more than once, worn or used something he told me not to pack. I keep score quietly.
The honest constraint: when you’re towing, space and weight are finite. Every bin that comes along has to earn its spot. My rule is that everything gets a category and a container, and if it doesn’t fit the container, it doesn’t come. The list does the deciding so I don’t have to re-argue it at 6am on departure day.
Food is its own planning problem at this scale. Three weeks means you’re not packing groceries, you’re planning a resupply rhythm – what comes from home, what gets bought along the way, and which stretches of the route have real grocery stores versus a gas station with ambitions. We plan the big shops around the towns we know we’ll pass through, and we keep a running list on the road so a Walmart stop takes twenty minutes instead of an hour of wandering.
Traveling With Other Couples: Talk First, Not Mid-Trip
We love the people coming on this trip. I’d still tell you that three weeks together is a long time, and the trips that go well are the ones where the awkward conversations happen before anyone leaves the driveway.
- Money – how shared costs get split, and what’s separate. Decide it once, up front.
- Pace – some people want to wheel every day. Some people want a slow morning. Both are fine, but say it out loud.
- Alone time – it’s not rude to take a night apart. It’s how everyone still likes each other in week three.
None of this is complicated. It just doesn’t happen on its own, and the cost of skipping it is a tense motorhome somewhere in Oklahoma.
And Then There’s Gia
Gia is coming, and this is her second long haul – she did the four-week trip too. So her prep isn’t guesswork anymore; it’s part of the route itself. Off-leash stops get mapped in advance (campgrounds with dog parks, fuel stops with dog runs), and Jeep and boat days get spaced through the schedule so she’s not stacking motorhome days back to back. We wrote up everything we’ve learned about traveling with her – boat, trail, and motorhome – in its own post. The short version: she’ll settle in by day two and bark at every departure anyway.
What I Still Worry About
Here’s the honest ending. Ron has a plan for this trip, and his plans work. I know that from years of watching them work. I still keep my own list, check the weather for stops we won’t reach for ten days, and mentally rehearse problems that will almost certainly never happen.
That’s not a flaw in the system. That is the system. His calm and my list have gotten us through every trip so far, and the gap between what I worry about and what actually goes wrong keeps shrinking. I’ll report back in October on which one of us was right this time. Historically, it’s him. I’m due.
| Building your own route? The Trip Ready Planner is where all of this lives for us – the itinerary, the reservations, the packing lists by trip type, the food math, even Gia’s sections. It’s part of our Adventure Together Pack, and it’s the actual planner our September trip is sitting in right now. |
