Bucket List

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
I spent ten years fulling timing mainly in the National Parks. Some of them I visited many times. Here is a list of my top ten National Parks:

1 - Yosemite
2 - Grand Canyon
3 - Grand Tetons
4 - Channel Islands
5 - Zion
6 - Bryce Canyon
7 - Everglades
8 - North Cascades
9 - Joshua Tree
10- Death Valley
 
Utah National parks are some of our favorites but with that said we have been to the majority of the national Parks and have not been disappointed besides the crowds at some. They are all different. The Redwoods are a must see.
 
We have been to Alaska three times including the Artic Circle once, and have been all over the lower US and if we had the time (which we don't) we would go back there in a heart beat.

Jack L

 
1. Alaska & western Canada (BC, Alberta, Yukon) - worth an entire summer!
2. Yellowstone NP
3. Arches NP & Moab area
4. Bryce NP
5. Acadia NP & the Bar Harbor area
6. Western NC and Eastern TN mountain area
 
The Oregon coast  is a definite return as often as possible.
I loved Arizona when I was there last winter and plan on returning. KOFA is on my bucket list, and returning to Quartzite is in the plans.
Alaska is high on my list. Never been there but want to go driving up the AlCan highway.
I'll be crossing Death Valley off my list in November. :)
Willowa Lake in Oregon. I was there a bunch of years ago, and want to go back.
The redwoods.. again, a return trip.
Arches National monument, Zion or Bryce canyon, Grand canyon, garden of the gods, are all return or new bucket list items.
Basically all over the country. I want to see it all.
 
That's how I feel! I want to see it all. I'm hitting most of my bucket list destinations on my upcoming trip, but Alaska is my "some day"
 
I also want to drive down to Belize. I dont think I would go in my mh though. Just drive my car. Id also want to have someone else along. I want to drive down there to visit my friends who live there. They are the ones who rescued my dog and nursed him back to health. I want to take him with me so they can see him and so that he can see his foster siblings... a pit bull, a potlicker, and a old curmudgeon of a chihuahua terrier mix. Plus Ive always wanted to visit there anyway.
 
I do all my traveling with my kids. They're getting older now, so I know my time with them coming everywhere is limited. The big trip we're planning will also include the dog and the cat :/ 
 
We had planned on going to Alaska this summer, but things happened. We will probably do it in a couple of years. Next year is looking like northwest US, but that is in the ?probable? stage, not confirmed. Both of those are on the bucket list. We?ve already done many of the western US national parks, many of them multiple times. I still want to circumnavigate the Great Lakes; drive the Great River Road the length of the Mississippi; spend more time at the smaller tribal, national, and state Native American sites in the southwest; visit the east coast concentrating on early colonial historic sites; and spent a couple of months in the great western Canadian provincial and national parks. Oh, and we plan on spending a month some time looking at the historic gold mining sites on both sides of the Sierras. Then there is the entire Lewis and Clark trail. Can you tell we like historical sites? We have done big sections of various National Historic Trails, and we have enjoyed them all.
 
My bucket list is all of the above!  You guys and gals are making me so envious.  I would love taking off to see the world (or just the US) but my hobbies dominated about the first 25 years of my marriage and now it's the wife's turn.  She shows horses and that takes up most free weekends and sometimes weeks. It also depletes the bank account pretty quick.  Actually I really enjoy it.  We've make a lot of new friends and it's the reason we bought the camper in the first place.  We take it to the shows and hang out with a lot of really nice people.  And we do go to some really nice places.  Just not the western national parks. 
 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
1. Alaska & western Canada (BC, Alberta, Yukon) - worth an entire summer!
2. Yellowstone NP
3. Arches NP & Moab area
4. Bryce NP
5. Acadia NP & the Bar Harbor area
6. Western NC and Eastern TN mountain area

Agree.  Done them all with the exception of Alaska and planning/hoping soon.  Headed to Western NC and TN mountains right after labor day, again.
 
This really is a hard question to answer, there are sensory overload spectacular sights Yellowstone, where after a few days you go blah another majestic world class view of a canyon with a waterfall, I saw 5 of those yesterday, along with 3 geysers and a number of hot pots and other thermal features...

Then there are others like the fossil wall at Dinosaur national monument, sure it is an awe inspiring sight to see thousands of fossils still all embedded in a rock wall at once, but it is just the one spot there a couple of hundred feet long, the rest of the park is nice enough too with canyons, etc. but it is sort of in the middle of nowhere, you drive through hundreds of miles of sameness of western Colorado or eastern Utah to get there.

Then on a been there done that, side of things, I think everyone should at least once drive US 385 from Amarillo, Texas to Rapid City, South Dakota, just to experience the vast emptiness of the middle of the United States, just short of 700 miles passing through no cities of over 10,000 people, maybe none over 7,500, most more like 1,500.    Not only do you not pass through any cities of over 8,000 along this entire route you never pass within 70 miles of a city over 8,000.
 
It's funny you say that Isaac, because I was talking to my kids about that same thing yesterday. We were talking about all the places we're going on our big trip next year and I was saying that I really hope they don't become immune to the awesomeness of it all after seeing new place after new place for 10 months. I liken it to Niagara Falls, they can't appreciate that people come from all over the world to see it because to them it's something they grew up with living in western NY.
 
I think the key is probably to mix things up, don't just go for fabulous majestic views, but include cultural stuff in there too.    Visit historic towns, museums, even festivals.  Try the regional foods, take a Barbecue tour of the southern states and see how the flavor changes from the Carolinas with their mustard BBQ sauces mostly on Pork, across Alabama with their sweet BBQ, and on into Texas with the Tangy BBQ which is almost all on Beef, in between stop off in south Louisiana for some real Cajun food, not that Creole mash up stuff the sell in New Orleans.  While you are at it stop to see various bits of Americana along the way, go to the Car Collection museum in Kearney Nebraska, tour the Vicksburg civil war battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi, take a relaxing (or not so relaxing)  float trip down the North Platte River in Saratoga, Wyoming depending on the season.

There are so many places to explore, and many of them hidden away around the country in places you would not expect to find them, like the National Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas ( a small town about 75 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country).      Who would expect a museum that can take days to  tour to be located in a town of 12,000 people in central Texas, the basic ticket is a 2 day pass for a reason.

The list goes on and on, but as I said I see the key is to mix it up, stop in to see that worlds largest ball of twine, or when passing through (or near) Hutchinson, Kansas catch both the Cosmosphere space museum and the Startica salt mine museum where you actually descent nearly 650 feet below ground to tour a salt mine.
 
Absolutely! This is the generalized schedule so far:


July 31 Presque Isle, PA
August 8 Cedar Point
Aug 9 Upper Peninsula, Michigan
Aug 14 Apostle Islands
Aug 20 Duluth
Aug 23 Bismark
Aug 24 Badlands National Park
Aug 25 Mt Rushmore, Wind Cave
Aug 26 Grand Teton 
Aug 28 Yellowstone
Sept 9 Missoula, Montana
Sept 10 Glacier Park
Sept 14 Spokane
Sept 15 Mt Ranier
Sept 18 Seattle
Sept 24 Olympic National Park
Sept 29 Portland
Oct 2 Crater Lake
Oct 3 Redwoods
Oct 7 Lassen Volcanic Park
Oct 8 San Francisco
Oct 13 Lake Tahoe
Oct 18 Yosemite
Oct 24 King Canyon/Sequoia
Oct 28 Big Sur and Pacific Highway
Oct 29 L.A./ Hollywood/ Disneyland
Nov 7 San Diego
Nov 20 Joshua Tree
Nov 22 Death Valley
Nov 24 Las Vegas
Dec 3 Hoover Dam
Dec 4 Grand Canyon
Dec 10 Canyon de Chelly
Dec 11 Four Corners
Dec 12 Mesa Verde
Dec 14 Arches National Park
Dec 17 Canyonland/ Capitol Reef
Dec 18 Zion National Park
Dec 20 Bryce Canyon
Dec 22 Salt Lake City
Dec 27 Great Sand Dunes
Dec 29 Albuquerque
Jan 3 San Antonio
Jan 10 Austin
Jan 11 Houston
Jan 17 New Orleans
Jan 28 Tampa
Feb 4 Everglades
Feb 6 Key West
Feb 7 Ft Lauderdale
Feb 14 St Augustine
Feb 18 Savannah
Feb 25 Nashville
March 3 Memphis
March 10 Arkansas
March 11 Oklahoma
March 14 Kansas
March 18 Nebraska
March 22 Iowa
March 26 St Louis
April 2 Mammoth Cave
April 5 Lexington
April 14 Myrtle beach
April 20 my college room mate in NC
April 21 Virginia Beach
May 5 Dewey/ Rehoboth beach
May 13 Six Flags NJ
May 19 Lancaster/ Hershey
 
Somewhere around Jan 3rd, you should plan a stop at Palo Duro canyon.

it's real neat, out in the flat land of texas and all of a sudden, the ground opens into a big canyon. you drive down to the bottom to the campgrounds.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
131,753
Posts
1,384,358
Members
137,524
Latest member
freetoroam
Back
Top Bottom