Rathburns on the Road

  John has been asking me if I was going to do another blog post, so I decided to do a final reflection to close out this digital journal of our trip. We traveled over 15,000 miles through 21 states. Gold stars indicate states where we camped in at least one location. We visited 13 national parks, plus some state parks and national monuments such as Mount Rushmore and Devil's Tower. Everyone wants to know if we are happy to be back. The answer is a resounding YES. The trip was an adventure of a lifetime and we made fantastic memories, but it was time to come home. While in Yellowstone, we hung out with a family who has been RVing full-time since their children were babies, and they said they return to their home base every three months because their kids (now 9 and 4) get squirrelly if they're on the road for much longer. Sure enough, it was around the three-month mark that the boys and I started to feel travel-weary and homesick. (Eric is much more adaptable, so he wasn't ...

After a busy week bouncing around Utah, we started the long trek to Texas. It was a 16 hour drive, so we planned to split it over 3 days. (A normal drive day for us is 5-6 hours because towing a giant RV is much more tiring.) However, Eric was feeling very motivated to keep going, so we ended up doing 10 hours in one day! It was a long, tiring day but it got us to Dallas a day earlier which gave us time for some fun - starting with the rodeo on Saturday night. I always love rodeos! The next day, we went to Dinosaur Valley State Park. I found this place a couple of years ago when planning a trip to Texas that fell through. Now that we were only an hour away, we had to take Reed because he LOVES dinosaurs. This park has dozens of real dinosaur tracks in a dry riverbed. While most places would rope them off to keep people away, this park leaves them fully accessible so you can walk right up to them and put your own hand or foot in them. As you can see, Reed loved it! For the next few day...

For years I've heard about the beauty of the national parks out west, but I only had a vague sense of what was unique about each of the desert parks or where they were located in relation to one another. As we started to plan our route south, we realized we could visit all of Utah's "Mighty 5" parks and  the Grand Canyon. Eric took the week off and we had to relocate campsites every couple of days to stay within a reasonable driving distance, but we were able to complete a whirlwind tour of six parks in six days! Canyonlands We started with Canyonlands National Park just outside of Moab. As the name implies, this park is all about canyons. Some of the scenery felt reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, but without the haziness of such distance and depth. These canyons, while not as deep, had clear, expansive views and felt more accessible to explore.  We hiked to Mesa Arch, a popular spot that was crawling with young people all trying to get that perfect selfie or staged ...