Christmas X-Country Trip

Road Trip Album at:

December 20, 2012-January 5, 2013

Overview

Our second Cross-Country Trip in the Prius was over Mark’s holiday break from work…driving back to New Jersey from Bellevue. We planned the route around spending Christmas at Yosemite National Park, and attending the Christmas Day Bracebridge Dinner.

We drove down the Oregon & northern California coast, till we started heading inland south of San Francisco, toward Yosemite for a 2 day visit. From there, we looped south through Bakersfield to visit Death Valley, Grand Canyon, and Albuquerque, before we hightailed it home in 4 days…east on I-40, northeast on I-81.

Bellevue to Spring Lake Heights, Spent the night in:

Highlights

Aside from the National Park Sites around which we planned our trip, we

• Took our 1st Tour of the Tillimook Creamery
• Visited Cousin Patti-Q & Wes in Fortuna, CA
• Toured Hoover Dam…including inside
• Spent New Years Eve/Day in Albuquerque, NM, having our New Years Eve dinner on top of Sandia Peak, in a snow storm
• Ate BBQ with Texas Toast in Texas and Catfish in Memphis
• In the Memphis Visitor Center on the Mississippi, we were reminded that it was already the 3rd year of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. That inspired our travel for the rest of the year and into 2016!
• Visited (/drove through) 8 States for the 1st time together: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia

We visited 4 National Park Sites

Three we had planned the trip around, and 1 was a last minute visit:

• Yosemite National Park (#25) for Christmas!!!
• Death Valley National Park (#26)
• Grand Canyon National Park (#27)
• One of the Civil War Parks-Union Soil:
  • Antietam National Battlefield (#28)

Antietam visit inspired by our stop in Memphis. It was our 2nd Civil War Site, and kicked off 3 years of visiting many Civil War Sites during the Civil War Sesquicentennial.