Road Trips

I have had this book that's been sitting on my bookshelf for years called Road Trip USA by Jamie Jensen.  I always intended to actually, you know, go on a road trip and make use of it one day but I never did.  Although I adore the idea of a road trip, with modern life being what it is, there never seemed to be enough time.  Or money, since I don't actually own my own car.

I just recently remembered that I owned this book and I've just been poring over it since I really am going to get to use it now.  It's an awesome book.  It contains eleven separate cross country roads through every state but Alaska and Hawaii plus a couple forays into Canada.

Living in Chicago, we are at one end of Route 66, so it seems natural to start with that one.  A bonus for us it that both of our sets of parents live in cities on or near Route 66.  My parents are in Oklahoma City and Paul's are in southern California.

I have to admit I've already planned out the first leg of our journey, Chicago to Oklahoma City and am now actually excited about visiting Missouri.  Missouri!  The only state I forgot when I did that game where you have to name all 50 states in five minutes.  They have caves there and a really good frozen custard stand and a Jesse James museum.  And the Ozarks (though I don't think Route 66 goes through there)!

If only we could leave right now.

 photo by meddygarnet

Research

For some reason, finding books on RVing is really difficult - at least in the brick and mortar world (there seem to be plenty of options online).  Up until the other day all of the bookstores I went to had zilch despite (or maybe because of) the fact that I live in a major city with many chain and independent bookstores.

Finally, a day or so ago, I decided to take a load of my books to sell at Half Price Books (as part of my decluttering program in preparation for moving into a trailer).  I only got $20 crummy dollars for my trade in but it was totally worth it because they actually had a section in the store about RVs, with three whoe books!  I bought two of them Full Time RVing: A Complete Guide to Life on the Open Road by Bill and Jan Moeller (a little outdated but whatever) and The Complete Idiot's Guide to RVing by Brent Peterson.  I'll review them for you when I'm done reading.

I figure with these two books and an RSS feed full of fulltiming blogs, my husband and I will be able to educate ourselves on the topic of RVing and come up with a master plan.