Planning and some "minor" detours Pt. 1

   Wow, it's been a while since I made that first post but time is just flying by. As I type this post, it's less than 100 days until our big trip!

   In this post I'll go into some detail about are planning of the trip and fitting in a couple of detours to places that we're taking the opportunity to visit whilst we're travelling (relatively) close by.

   So first off we had to decide which way to travel, Chicago to LA or visa-versa. It seems that most who make this journey travel East to West and many of the route guides are written this way too so it seemed logical to follow in these footsteps.

   The next big decision was where to stay along the route and how long for. There are countless towns and cities along the way and many more hotels and motels so we were spoiled for choice in this sense but eventually we settled upon the following destinations for our overnight stops. Chicago, St Louis, Springfield MO, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Holbrook AZ, Las Vegas and finally Santa Monica.

   During the nights, planning and looking at maps, I couldn't help but notice that we weren't all that far away from an aviation Mecca... Tucson AZ. Located in Tucson is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, home of AMARG or more commonly known as "The Bone Yard". This is where old, retired military aircraft meet their fate and are dismantled for parts (in most cases). But before they meet the scrapman's axe, they are lined up in the Arizona desert and the Pima Air & Space Museum run guided tours of the facility. Thankfully Lisa is very understanding and accommodating to the man-child she married and said "we should go because we're so close and you may never get another opportunity" - one happy man-child! So now we added Tucson to our list of overnight stays.

   Next up was, how many nights to stay in the locations along our journey? Obviously we'd love to spend 2 or 3 days in each location and see all we could but time isn't on our side in this case and we only have 16 nights to cram it in all.

  Firstly, Chicago. This being our first stop after our flight we thought it would be a good idea to get properly rested before we begin our epic adventure so we settled on three nights in the Windy City. There's plenty to see and do in Chicago and three days wouldn't be enough to fit it all in but we'll strive to visit the main attractions, such as Chicago 360, Navy Pier, Sears Tower, the Adler Planetarium and hopefully a tour of Soldier Field (BEAR DOWN!!!). We also booked tickets to go see Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre, Lisa and I are really looking forward to that!


Part 2 will cover the rest of the journey and I promise, it won't take me as long to write (otherwise we'll have been and come back!)