Road trips are my favourite way to travel. They’re my bread and butter. I grew up taking holidays in RVs around Canada and America with my family, and more recently, we did a mini European road trip, then Ben and I have taken to exploring closer to home around the UK on a couple of road trips, see our North Yorkshire to Cornwall one here.
Aren’t we all dreaming of travelling at some point? Right now, with the weather boiling hot and being stuck in an office most of the time, I’ve been dreaming about it even more so, thinking about how I would take advantage of the lovely weather and explore my surroundings. So here are a few road trips that have been on my mind recently:
Pacific North West and Yellowstone
Okay, okay, I’m cheating a bit here – this is a combination of road trips I’ve done before! But I was teenager then and I’m most definitely not now, and I also loved both these areas so much. On top of that, my parents and sister have just returned from a Yellowstone and mid-west road trip (the first one without me!) and I’ve fallen back in love with the area all over again.
I would start at Vancouver – the starting place for two of our previous road trips – then head over to the far side of Vancover Island. I was a bit apprehensive last time we did this as I’d heard it had drizzly, England-like weather, and because the sights were pretty bleak, however I surprised myself by falling totally in love with it. We’d then head down via Victoria into Washington state via Seattle and into Oregon because that coastline was SO gorgeous. One thing that really struck me about this area was the cities: I’m not a big city person at all, but I loved Victoria and Seattle – they had a really unique atmosphere that I haven’t felt in any other cities and I’d love to return to them.
And then time to head inland via Idaho to Yellowstone, stopping at the Grand Tetons on the way. I’ve said before how I just feel at home in the mountains and I still stand by that. While I wouldn’t want to live in the area around Yellowstone, it is absolutely fascinating – the landscapes incorporated snowy, tree covered mountains, rolling prairies and the red rocks of the desert, all in the space of one National Park.
My goal is one day to visit every National Park in the US – I’ve already ticked off around 15 of these so I’m part way there at least! – so I’d definitely throw in a few more of these as well as National Forest parks too which make for excellent picnics and hikes.
Australia’s Sunshine Coast
I have family that live in Australia but I’ve never met any of them – they moved away before I was born. As such, I’d love to see the place they call home. But Australia is HUGE. I’ve never been before but am under no illusions that I’d even get to see much more than a tiny percentage in one trip, which is why a road trip is very high on my itinerary to get as much seen of this beautiful country as possible.
There are SO many different options for travelling Australia, but I think I’d be most likely to grab a campervan off Gumtree and call that home for a little while along the Gold Coast, taking in the route between Brisbane and Cairns. This is a massively popular route, and while I try to stay off the beaten track where I can, I think there’s usually a reason places are so popular. This article gives a good run down of the sights along this route, including the Great Barrier Reef, Fraser Island and Glasshouse Mountains, and even breaks down the route into handy chunks to travel too. Considering that I know very little about Australia (as compared to Europe and America, at least), I’d definitely be looking to follow some sort of a pre-planned route rather than make it ourselves like we normally do!
Wales
Compared to the two options above, Wales sounds pretttyyy boring. But give me a minute to explain first! I fully believe in exploring and appreciating things close to home as well as further afield. It’s only when you come back from a holiday abroad and look around the place you live that you realise, actually, this place is pretty awesome too. And there’s a reason tourists come to the UK! I always wondered what was so amazing about Yorkshire that people wanted to come on holiday there, but then visiting places like Fountains Abbey recently has changed my mind about that – I can totally understand it!
Wales is the place that my family actually comes from originally – with a name like Sian Hannah Thomas, can’t you tell?! I’ve visited a few times but all when I was younger, which is why it’s a trip I want to do again on my own terms to see what it’s like as a grown up. We actually started planning out a road trip there last year but…went to Disneyland Paris instead! But that itinerary still stands for future instead, starting at Chester (we just really want to go to Chester Zoo!) then heading over to Snowdonia and spending a few days in that area including the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, before heading down the coast to south Wales then over to Hay-on-Wye to visit the bookshops and coming back up north.
Where would you like to road trip?
