Don't judge me by my post title. I still have Sound of Music brain. By the way, you want to find an amazing community theatre organization with a long history of quality musical productions? Check out www.zilker.org. And stay tuned in the future for some of my favorite theatre stories, most of which occurred out at the park.
I guess it was about 2 years ago when I randomly got the urge to go on a road trip. I don't know where the urge came from, but somehow the seed got planted. I decided to brainstorm possible places I would go. At the time, I had no real idea of when I could go or whether it would actually happen, but since I am basically an obsessive planner, the idea of planning out a road trip just for fun sounded like a good time. Yes, I know I am an uber-dork. I'm ok with that.
Step number 1. Where are all of the places I want to go?
This wasn't all that difficult. My family took a pretty extensive road trip every summer as I was growing up. Every August, we would hit the road for 3 weeks. And keep a log. Yeah. Ask me about when I tried to keep a log of our college road trip to Florida and my roommates looked at me like I had 3 heads. So, anyway, I have already traveled to a lot of places across the country, but it's been years since I've been. There are some places that I remember fondly and want to see again as an adult (Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Yellowstone, Denver), some places that I remember fondly, but don't really need to see again (Mesa Verde, Mount Rushmore, St Louis Arch), and some places that I haven't gotten to yet (Glacier National Park, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver). Plus, there are the places where I have friends or family that I really want to visit or destinations that I just really want to go to again. So, anyway, I made a list. A very extensive list. Of all the possible places I wanted to go. It's actually changed a couple times since the initial list, but most of the original list has remained. The current list has 39 destinations.
Step number 2. Figure out the basic route.
I then took all the possible places I wanted to go and put them on a map. I will obviously start and end in Austin, so do I start going west or east? In any direction, the drive out of Texas is at least 4 hours, so whatever my first destination is is going to be a ways away. So flip a coin and decide to go west first. Clockwise around the country it is. The original plan was for my first stop to be the Grand Canyon, but at some point, I decided a 3-day drive to start the trip was too much, so I decided to go to Denver first and added in a stop in Oklahoma City for good measure.
Step number 3. Create a spreadsheet.
Ah, spreadsheets. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I can make a spreadsheet for basically anything. My movie spreadsheet in college that was an inventory of all of my VHS tapes? My meal planning spreadsheets to organize my grocery shopping and massive cook days? My budget spreadsheet to track all my finances? Good times, all of them. Like the route, the road trip planning spreadsheet has evolved extensively. What started as a simple list of destinations now encompasses lookups to Google Maps to determine driving distances and times, the ability to dynamically change the route based on operating hours of the establishments that I want to visit, and automatic calculations of mileage and expected expenses.
And then at some point, I stalled. I had the idea, I had the spreadsheet, I had the plans, and I didn't think it would happen. It seemed like a pipe dream. See, the original plan was for 2 people. Me and ______. So I figured that I would put the plans on the shelf until there was someone to go with me. And every once in a while, I'd think, "I really want to go. Some day. Some day."
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